Central Florida professor receives $2 million NIH grant to study tumors that cause deafness, paralysis in children, young adults

From the Orlando Business Journal in Florida:

University of Central Florida Associate Professor Cristina Fernandez-Valle has been awarded two National Institutes of Health grants worth $2 million to research a disease that can leave children and young adults deaf, partially paralyzed or brain damaged.

One of the federal grants, worth $1.5 million, will further her investigation of 15 proteins she believes may be useful in treating the tumors associated with neurofibromatosis type 2, which affects one in 50,000 people and can shorten a person’s lifespan by 40 years, according to a UCF release.

Neurofibromatosis type 2 tumors are benign, but their locations, usually in the hearing and balance nerve in the brain, can lead to deafness and facial paralysis. Surgical removal of the tumors can cause more damage.

The second NIH grant will be used to research the normal function of a protein in cells that covers the nerve fibers in the peripheral nervous system. When the neurofibromatosis type 2 gene is mutated, some of these cells form tumors. Fernandez-Valle’s research will focus on how the normal protein functions, in hopes of finding a way to correct it when it goes haywire.

Fernandez-Valle joined UCF’s Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences in the College of Medicine in 1996 after positions at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Miami, the University of Miami School of Medicine and the Health Research Institute at Orlando Regional Medical Center.