Nicholas Parrish, MD, PhD Awarded Hypothesis Fund Grant

The Hypothesis Fund, an organization that provides seed grants that fund early-stage research projects, has named Nicholas Parrish, MD, PhD, Abdominal Transplant Fellow, as one of four new grant recipients. Dr. Parrish will study how endogenous herpesviruses can interact with the immune system to cause neurological disease.

Wilton Williams, PhD, Associate Professor in Surgery, said of Dr. Parrish’s research, “Nick’s project challenges current dogma with his hypothesis that endogenous retroviruses (generally thought to be dormant in the host) shape host immunity and contribute to the development of neurological disease. He aims to uncover a fundamentally new mechanism by which virus-derived elements that form our biological niche can cause disease—if successful, it would be a seminal discovery in science that could lead to advances in personalized medicine.”