The Brain Prize

Christine Holt

Christine Holt

Professor of Developmental Neuroscience
Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at Cambridge University

Christine Holt received a B.Sc. Hons degree in Biological Sciences in 1977 from the University of Sussex and in 1982 was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Zoology from King’s College London. She did her postdoctoral training in the Physiology Department at Oxford University and in the Biology Department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). In 1992, she joined the faculty at UCSD and became a tenured Associate Professor in 1996. In 1997, she moved to the University of Cambridge as a Lecturer in the Anatomy Department and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. In 2003 she became the Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience (PDN) at Cambridge.

Christine Holt is interested in how connections are first formed in the brain and how they are maintained over the long-term. In the vertebrate visual system, neurons in the eye extend axons over a long distance to find their synaptic targets in the brain. The goal of her research has been to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms that guide and maintain these axons. Her work led to the demonstration that local protein synthesis and degradation are a required part of growth cone guidance, a highly original step-change in our understanding of axon growth.

More recently, she has shown that local axonal protein synthesis is necessary for axon survival, suggesting that mature axons require a continuous supply of locally synthesized proteins for their maintenance. The ability to make new proteins on-site and on-demand in the most remote cellular compartments of neurons, such as axons, growth cones and presynaptic terminals, provides adaptability and resilience.
By studying the cell biology of growing axons and mechanisms of local protein synthesis, her work has provided a better understanding of how neural connections are first established and has made the orderly growth of retinal ganglion cell axons one of the best understood examples of axon navigation anywhere in the brain. 

Her work has also shed light on how axons are sustained throughout the lifetime of an animal. Fundamental knowledge of this sort is essential for understanding neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders and for developing clinical therapies in nerve repair.

Brain Prize winner of 2023 for having made ground-breaking discoveries by showing how the synthesis of new proteins is triggered in different parts of the neuron

The Brain Prize 2023 is also awarded to:

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Christine Holt