NEWS
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February 27, 2020: "What does genetic research tell us about autism?"
Director of the Translational Research Centre "Human Genetics and Cognitive Functions", Pasteur Institute, Paris While scientists have long suspected genetics to play a major role in the development of autism spectrum disorders, the first genes were not identified until the beginning of the 21st century.
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Virginie Perizzolo’s work awarded prize
The 11th French Congress of Psychiatry (CFP) awarded Best Scientific Publications of 2019 by Young Researchers Prize, 3rd Place to Virginie Perizzolo (née Pointet) of the University of Geneva, for her paper with Synapsy member Daniel Schechter: “EEG recording during an emotional face-matching task in children of mothers with interpersonal violence-related posttraumatic stress disorder”, published in the journal Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging. This award recognizes outstanding publications by junior researchers. It was presented at the opening ceremony of the CFP on Wednesday 4 December 2019 and the paper, presented on 6 December in Nice. “Wonderful and incredible news! “said the young researcher when she learned that she would be one of the prize winners.
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New EEG Study on Euthymic Bipolar Disorder Patients
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a common and severe psychiatric disorder. A better understanding of the underlying pathophysiology is needed to identify objective biomarkers of BD that would improve diagnostic and treatment. Evidence from brain imaging studies consistently points to abnormalities in circuits implicated in emotion regulation and reactivity, but the precise temporal dynamics of the functional brain networks at rest remain to be determined. Numerous studies reported abnormalities in temporal properties of resting-state EEG microstates in neuropsychiatric disorders, suggesting that altered brain network dynamics may represent biomarkers. Only two studies investigated resting-state EEG in BD patients, none of euthymic BD patients.
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Genetics and psychiatry: Using Genetic Variants to Stratify the Enormous Heterogeneity of Patients
Genetic variants have an effect on our appearance, functioning and health. Synapsy is taking a detailed look at their association with psychiatric illness phenotypes. Following the success of the first two Synapsy phases, the time has come to begin to apply genetic analyses to the wide range of clinical data that has been collected thoughout the years. In recent years, polygenic risk scores (PRSs) calculated from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have proved useful in predicting the risks of complex illnesses and analyzing genotype-phenotype relationships for a better stratification of illness subtypes. Synapsy recently acquired the resources to use this type of analysis to begin to genetically stratify its clinical cohorts and thus possibly improve the diagnosis and prevention of psychiatric illnesses.
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Emmanouil Dermitzakis – “Producing Something Together is so Rewarding!”
Emmanouil Dermitzakis is from Heraklion in Greece. After studying biology at the University of Crete, Emmanouil completed a PhD in genetics at Penn State University. He then joined the University of Geneva as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory led by Stylianos Antonarakis. Emmanouil left the Swiss City in 2001 to set up his own laboratory at the Sanger Institute, a leading genomics center based near Cambridge, before returning to Geneva in 2009 as a full professor in the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development in the Faculty of Medicine. Emmanouil’s laboratory works on genetic variants and their causality link with complex diseases such as diabetes or cancer. He has been an affiliated member of Synapsy since 2018 and is keen to help the consortium with his expertise on genetic variants. We met him on the margins of his seminar during the last annual retreat in Villars.
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Denis Jabaudon – Synapsy is Developing a Common Culture
Denis Jabaudon is a professor of neuroscience and current director of the Department of Basic Neuroscience at the University of Geneva. He is also an attending physician in the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Geneva (HUG). Professor Jabaudon trained as a medical doctor at the University of Lausanne before doing a PhD at the University of Zurich. He subsequently undertook his internal medicine and neurology residency before becoming a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. Denis came back to Switzerland in 2008 to launch his own lab, trying to combine his interest in neuronal circuits, synaptic physiology and brain development.
