Dozen La Jolla medical researchers are awarded $500,000 each from Prebys Foundation

Fourteen San Diego researchers — 12 of them from La Jolla-based institutions — will receive grants of $500,000 each as part of a new Research Heroes award from the Prebys Foundation, the San Diego charity created by philanthropist Conrad Prebys.

The $7 million allocation provides two years of support to those doing medical research and "seeks to address the critical gap in women and underrepresented groups in leading research positions by offering substantial funding to researchers for projects that might otherwise go unsupported," according to a statement about the program.

The foundation made its choices after consulting with the Science Philanthropy Alliance and Open Impact to create the Heroes program and select the first group of awardees.

Here are the Prebys Research Heroes from La Jolla institutions and their avenues of investigation:

Rachel Blaser, UC San Diego: Blaser will explore "how healthy aging adults perform on tasks that test their perception of space and their problem-solving abilities." The work may lead to "early-detection methods for cognitive decline, which could transform how we approach diseases like Alzheimer’s."

Dannielle Engle, Salk Institute for Biological Studies: Engle and her team "are working to find a way to easily and quickly diagnose pancreatic cancer, using a test similar to the PSA test for prostate cancer or colon cancer screenings."

Stephanie Fraley, UC San Diego School of Medicine: Fraley "is tackling two major challenges facing human health today: advancing infectious-disease detection technologies and identifying therapeutic targets for cancer metastasis — two conditions that account for a significant proportion of deaths globally."

Mia Huang, Scripps Research: Huang "aims to impact pregnancy health risks like preeclampsia — a common, yet poorly understood pregnancy disorder — and seeking markers that could predict complications long before they occur."

Xin Jin, Scripps Research: Jin "is working on approaches to understanding the cellular underpinnings and fundamental principles of brain development, which will allow us to understand how diseases like autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, among others, progress."

Marygorret Obonyo, UC San Diego School of Medicine: Obonyo "is studying novel ways to identify genes that increase the risk of gastric cancer and treatments that could be effective before the cancer reaches the terminal stage."

Erica Ollmann Saphire, La Jolla Institute for Immunology: Ollmann Saphire, the institute's president and chief executive, "studies the molecular relationships between pathogens and their hosts, learning about where viruses interact with the immune system and where they are vulnerable to being neutralized."

Sonia Sharma, La Jolla Institute for Immunology: Sharma "is particularly interested in how molecules in the blood can activate the brain’s immune system as a way to design treatments for Alzheimer’s disease."

Tatyana Sharpee, Salk Institute for Biological Studies: Sharpee "is working on potentially groundbreaking research that ... is profoundly interdisciplinary, drawing on physics, mathematics, neuroscience, molecular biology, hyperbolic geometry and even cosmology to help scientists better unlock the mysteries of the brain."

Sujan Shresta, La Jolla Institute for Immunology: Shresta will focus "on protecting the public against several medically relevant viruses, including dengue, Zika, West Nile, Powassan and other pathogens that manipulate human immune cells and which have the potential to cause long-term neurological issues such as brain fog and potentially even dementia."

Lisa Stowers, Scripps Research: Stowers "focuses on learning more about how the brain works in order to develop medications and therapies to treat a wide variety of brain-related disorders, from depression to dementia."

Daniela Valdez-Jasso, UC San Diego School of Medicine: Valdez-Jasso "focuses on identifying markers for diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension — high blood pressure of the lungs — before it’s too late, understanding how the disease progresses and identifying opportunities for developing new drugs to treat the disease."

Also receiving grants are Razel Bacuetes Milo of the University of San Diego, a family nurse practitioner and behavioral science researcher studying the relationship between perceived well-being and stress in the Filipino community, and Angelica Riestra of San Diego State University, who is trying "to find novel ways to help counteract the disproportionate impact of trichomoniasis."

For more information about each researcher's work and the Heroes program, visit PrebysResearchHeroes.org .

— La Jolla staff contributed to this report. ◆

This story originally appeared in La Jolla Light .