Center for Epilepsy and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ENDD)

Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) are establishing the Center for Epilepsy and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ENDD) to accelerate collaborative research in genetic therapies for neurodevelopmental disorders. This new center will combine the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of clinicians and scientists at Penn and CHOP, led by director Benjamin Prosser, PhD, and co-directors Beverly Davidson, PhD, and Ingo Helbig, MD.

ENDD will initially focus on developing therapies for disorders related to mutations of the STXBP1 and SYNGAP1 genes – which are linked to abnormal brain function, intellectual disability, epilepsy, and motor and behavioral impairments – with the goal of expanding its efforts to other genetic neurodevelopmental disorders over time. ENDD strengthens an existing partnership between Dr. Prosser and Dr. Davidson, the Director of the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics and Chief Scientific Strategy Officer at CHOP and Professor of Pathology and Lab Medicine at Penn, and Dr. Helbig, a pediatric neurologist in the Department of Neurology at Penn and Division of Neurology at CHOP and the Director of Genomic Science at CHOP’s Epilepsy NeuroGenetics Initiative (ENGIN). Their joint work in the Center will target the development of anti-sense oligonucleotide (ASO), gene therapy, and CRISPR-based strategies for the treatment of NDD.

Read the news release announcing the initiative here.