Congratulations to Dr. Adriel Barrios-Anderson who has received the 2026-27 NREF Research Fellowship Grant and Young Clinician Investigator Award in the amount of $40,000 for his project “Genomic analysis of mosaic variants and epigenetic features in drug-resistant focal epilepsy using tissue from stereo-EEG electrodes.”
Drug-resistant focal epilepsy (DRE) remains a major cause of morbidity in children, with up to one-third of patients continuing to seize despite surgical intervention. Emerging evidence implicates somatic mosaic variants and epigenetic dysregulation in epileptogenesis, yet spatially resolved molecular studies have been limited. Building on advances demonstrating that tissue adherent to stereo-EEG (sEEG) electrodes contains viable neural cells, this project will perform integrated genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic profiling of sEEG-adherent and resected brain tissue to characterize seizure onset, propagation, and non-involved regions. Using long- and short-read sequencing, we aim to identify region-specific molecular signatures underlying epileptogenic circuits. These findings will establish a minimally invasive framework for linking molecular mechanisms with electrophysiology in human epilepsy. Under the mentorship of Drs. Goldstein, McCarthy, and Grannan, Dr. Barrios-Anderson is excited to pursue this work with the generous support of the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation, advancing toward precision-guided therapies for DRE.