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KIST CFC Director Jinhyun Kim wins the HFSP grant
- Date : 2016-06-10
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KIST CFC Director Jinhyun Kim wins the HFSP grant
- Dr. Kim named as the 2016 awardee of HFSP Research Grant, so-call “Nobel Prize Fund”-
The Center for Functional Connectomics (CFC) research team led by director Jihyun Kim of Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Dr. Lee Byung Gwon) was selected as the winner of the 2016 HFSP grant for the second time in Korea. The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) is a collaborative inter-governmental life science research institute.
Dr. Kim teamed up with Professor Daniel Huber from the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the University of Geneva Medical Faculty and Dr. Fabien Pifferi from the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The team will investigate how the neuronal circuits of the cerebral cortex of the brain compare across species and provide the treatment for relating diseases caused by abnormal neural network. In doing so, the team will combine state of the art molecular anatomy, neuronal activity monitoring, and Optogenetics to build a map on neural network of brain that visualizes the network by using over 400 mouse lemurs of the French research team.
Previously, neuroscience researches were largely conducted by using mouse (rodents) and drosophila (insecta). To understand the human brain, study on primates were necessary. Up until now, however, primates were difficult to be used in the research due to spawning, raising, and other reasons. Thus, this project, conducted by a Korean researcher with support from an international science collaboration organization by using micro-primates mouse lemur, promises to build a new model system for neuroscience research by compensating the weakness of the past studies.
Neuroscience research is mostly conducted by using rodents such as mouse based on the assumption that the result can be applied to primates and ultimately humans. In reality, many parts of brains have unique functional structures including neocortex that are found in reptilian and other vertebrate brains.
Although mouse lemurs are known as the smallest existing primates, they are the optimal research subject as the pregnancy period is relatively short and the size of brain is similar to that of mouse. Thus, most of results obtained by studies on mouse can be applied, analyzed, and compared with the study conducted by using mouse lemurs.
HFSP told that 675 teams applied for the 2016 HFSP grant and 25 teams including director Jinhyun Kim were selected in final. In 2012, KIST team led by Dr. Sebastien Royer was selected for the HFSP grant winner.