Rett Syndrome & Epigenetics

Brain Prize 2020 Announcement film:

On the 10-year anniversary of The Brain Prize, Lene Skole, CEO of the Lundbeck Foundation, explains why the Brain Prize was established by The Lundbeck Foundation and announces Huda Zoghbi and Adrian Bird as the winners of The Brain Prize 2020.
Chair of The Brain Prize selection committee, Professor Richard Morris, also explains why the selection committee found Huda Zoghbi’s and Adrian Bird’s work on Rett syndrome and epigenetics so compelling.

Brain Prize 2020 Ceremony film:

This short film was shown at the Brain Prize award ceremony, and it describes Huda Zoghbi’s and Adrian Bird’s upbringing, careers, and scientific journeys. It also explains how their separate areas of research were brought together by the discovery that mutations in MeCP2 are the cause of Rett syndrome.

Brain Prize 2020 Explainer film: Rett Syndrome

Huda Zoghbi and Adrian Bird describe the symptoms of Rett syndrome- a devastating condition that mainly affects girls in their early childhood. Huda Zoghbi recounts her 11-year search for the genetic mutation that caused Rett syndrome.

The identification of MeCP2 by Huda Zoghbi as the causative gene bought her research together with that of Adrian Bird’s which had shown that MeCP2 reads methylated DNA and in so doing controls gene expression in neurons. Both Huda and Adrian also describe their efforts to understand how mutations in MeCP2 affect the brain and the remarkable finding that the symptoms of Rett syndrome in a mouse model could be reversed by providing a good copy of MeCP2. This paves the way for using gene therapy to treat human patients suffering from Rett syndrome.

Brain Prize 2020 patient case story:

A life with Rett syndrome. This film profiles Mille, a young girl who suffers from Rett syndrome, and her family to reveal what it is like to live with the condition.