Dr. Alessio Accardi

A new study unveils a precise picture of how an ion channel found in most mammalian cells regulates its own function with a “ball-and-chain” channel-plugging mechanism. The findings could lead to new drugs that target these channels to treat disorders such as epilepsy and hypertension.

The molecular workings of a family of important but hard-to-study proteins called CLCs have been illuminated as never before in a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Dr. Alessio Accardi, professor of physiology and biophysics in anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded a five-year, $2.7 million grant by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for fundamental research on cell membrane proteins that have critical roles in biology and are involved in numerous human diseases.

A class of proteins known as TMEM16 scramblases permit rearrangement of lipids in the cell membrane chiefly by...