Collectively, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases are leading causes of illness, disability and premature death worldwide. And while they are categorized separately, they have much in common.
Similarly, Martin Kampmann, PhD, who studies neurodegenerative diseases, and Anna Victoria Molofsky, MD, PhD, who studies neuropsychiatric diseases, have different focuses, but their work overlaps, and they often collaborate. So, it’s fitting that both Kampmann and Molofsky are 2025 recipients of the Bowes Biomedical Investigator award.
The award is made possible by the William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation and supports scientists who take novel approaches and have the potential to make significant contributions to biomedicine. Recipients receive $1.25 million over five years.
Molofsky, the Samuel Barondes Professor of Neurobiology and Psychiatry and an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has always been drawn to things that people consider unimportant. When she set up her own UC San Francisco lab in 2015, Molofsky was contemplating areas that she felt were being ignored in brain research, including how the brain and the immune system communicate.
The Molofsky Lab is doing innovative research to define how the immune system impacts the brain. Its scientists also are researching the links between immune function and neurological and psychiatric disorders, including post-viral neurological syndromes. Their latest discoveries are bringing them one step closer to developing new treatments for neuropsychiatric diseases.
“Being named a Bowes Biomedical Investigator is such an honor because it allows me to really take risks to try a kind of science that might not have payoffs for many years, and to venture in new directions,” Molofsky says.
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Her family immigrated to the U.S. from Brazil when Molofsky was a child. She fell in love with science at the University of Michigan, where her research in stem cell research sparked a fascination with the brain’s regenerative abilities. This led her to pursue a PhD in stem cell biology and specialize in psychiatry.