Scott Baraban, PhD, professor of neurological surgery, had won a Catalyst award for his work showing the efficacy of testing certain drugs in zebrafish, and this year demonstrated the strategy’s success in a clinical trial. In that trial, children with Dravet syndrome, a rare and devastating genetic form of epilepsy that can cause hundreds of seizures per day, responded to the same medication that tested well in zebrafish. Baraban has been working with postdoc Aliesha Griffin, PhD, a former Catalyst intern.
