The Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowships, made possible by the Holloway Family Foundation Fund, continue and expand the AFTD postdoctoral fellowship program established in 2009. This month, AFTD is pleased to announce two recipients of these fellowships:

Hijai Regina Shin, PhD, was awarded a 2021-2023 Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship for her proposal, “Dissecting the molecular consequences of C9orf72 loss in lysosomal homeostasis and ALS-FTD disease pathogenesis.” In this project, Dr. Shin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Dr. Roberto Zoncu, will build on work carried out by former AFTD postdoctoral fellow Dr. Ming-Yuan Su. She plans to apply what she learns to devise strategies for the development of drugs that restore normal lysosome function in C9orf72-associated FTD.

The third recipient of a 2021-2023 Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship is Matthew Nolan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Clotide Lagier-Tourenne at Massachusetts General Hospital, for his proposal “Modulating TDP-43-dependent loss of STMN2 in FTD.” Dr. Nolan will use gene editing, stem cells, and animal models to advance our understanding of the role of RNA binding proteins in FTD. His project seeks to identify and evaluate new drugs as potential treatments for TDP-43-associated FTD.