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It’s an exciting time for epilepsy research! The annual American Epilepsy Society (AES) meeting took place earlier this month in Atlanta, giving us a look at the most promising, cutting-edge scientific developments happening today.

Below, a few of our Taking Flight grantees share trends they’re seeing and what we should keep an eye on:

Neurostimulation

“I saw a new and sizeable interest in improving neurostimulator treatments for drug-resistant epilepsy patients — along with more researchers and clinicians questioning the efficacy of these treatments. Though some patients do respond well, we do not understand why this treatment works in some cases and not others. This is potentially an area where machine learning can improve things.”

Dr. James Niemeyer

Weill Cornell Medicine

2024 Taking Flight Grantee

ASOs and Gene Therapy

“I am excited to see the future of antisense oligonucleotide (ASOs) and gene therapy for treating epilepsy. As we gain new insights into seizure generating networks through high-resolution recording techniques, these approaches have the potential to translate these mechanistic insights directly into personalized, disease-modifying therapies.”

Dr. Lauren Lau

Massachusetts General Hospital

2024 Taking Flight Grantee

Brain Slice Culture Technique

“The organotypic human brain slice culture technique had some exciting updates from when it was presented at AES 2024. This technique takes small pieces of brain tissue that causes seizures and keeps them alive in the lab as thin slices. These slices maintain much of the brain’s original structure and cell organization (“organotypic”), allowing researchers to safely study epilepsy in a setting that closely resembles the real human brain — without performing experiments in living people.”

“Researchers highlighted recent improvements that allow them to maintain these slices for several days. They can also now use specially designed viruses to label different types of brain cells. This makes it possible to observe, in real time, how these cells behave, interact, and contribute to seizure activity. Studying living human brain tissue from epilepsy patients provides valuable insights into the cellular changes that drive seizures and could lead to new, more effective treatments.”

Dr. Aswathy Ammothumkandy

University of Southern California

2025 Taking Flight Grantee

The future of epilepsy research is bright, but we need to keep our foot on the gas. Give today to power tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
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Our mission is to fund breakthrough research that will transform the lives of people with epilepsy as we lead the search for a cure. CURE Epilepsy is a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our tax identification number is 36-4253176.

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