This year, the Epilepsy Research Foundation (now Epilepsy Research UK) awarded a total of £370,432 to six research teams.

Three projects are investigating specific aspects of how brain cells develop and communicate, and how these processes can go wrong, leading to seizures:

• Scientists at Warwick University will be looking at the role of trigger chemicals called purines during seizures.
• A team in Birmingham ask what happens in the brain at
  the moment when a seizure begins?
• London researchers investigate how seizures damage the brain.

Two projects are looking at specific epilepsy syndromes:

• Researchers in Oxford and London will test blood samples from children with epilepsy for the genes behind a new epilepsy syndrome starting in infancy.
• Researchers in Exeter investigate a form of epilepsy where
  a seizure consists of a short period of forgetting.

Further donations received during the year allowed the continuation of a survey of the types of epilepsy seen in very young
children.

Epilepsy Research UK is very proud to support these world-class scientists who have won these grants through very stiff competition - we had 49 applications for over £3.6 million this year, ten times as much as we are able to support.

Leigh Slocombe, Executive Director of Epilepsy Research UK says "We are very pleased to add these five innovative projects to our expanding portfolio of research. Competition for funding was, once again, very fierce this year and the five projects selected represent the very best research. There were, however, many other projects that we would have supported had the funds been available. The primary goal of our merged charity, Epilepsy Research UK, will be to increase our funding capacity so that more research can be carried out for the benefit of the 450,000 people affected by epilepsy in the UK."

Epilepsy Research UK, PO Box 3004, London W4 4XT Tel/Fax: (+44) (0) 20 8995 4781 • Registered Charity No. 1100394 Incorporating Epilepsy Research Foundation and Fund for Epilepsy