We are almost half way through 2024, and while we have been quiet on the interwebs, we certainly have not been quiet behind the scenes. I’ve been steadily making progress on the admin side of moving our lab to the University of Sydney (with a quick family escape to the Margaret River of Western Australia for an offline rest: picture above from the Busselton Jetty). While I’m feeling more like a corporate project manager than a scientist lately, this inertia period due to the move is gradually coming to a close, and the rest of the group have been busy keeping the research cogs turning.
Excitingly, our “oldest” lab member Dominic has submitted his PhD thesis and given his final seminar. We are eagerly awaiting to hear back from his thesis examiners and to submit his final work for publication (stress, astrocytes and psychopathology preprint appearing within the next 1-2 weeks!). In the meantime, Dom has been working with us in a research assistant role helping transfer all our processes to USYD (essentially being my lab manager/PA/earth angel). We have been celebrating every milestone with champagne and we are excited for Dom as he launches into the next stage of his career in a few months.
In April we celebrated the graduations of Amelia and Adrianna, our 2023 Honours students who were both awarded a well deserved Honours Class 1. It was great to catch up with Amelia who is now attending Med School at the University of Wollongong, and Adrianna who is working in a hospital pathology lab, while making moves to undertake a career in genetic counselling. Both are doing extremely well and we are very proud to have been a step in their journey.
We have also had some work-related travel happening in our group, with our PhD student Katrina representing our lab in March at the Mass Spectrometry & Advances in the Clinical Lab conference in California. Katrina attended the conference and workshops learning about all things MALDI for the imaging of neurosteroids and peptides in brain tissue, as well as analysis. She did a great job representing our lab with leaders in this field. Just prior to this in February, I travelled to the National Institute of Health in Berlin for for an ERA-NET NEURON workshop regarding our recent NHMRC-NEURON Consortia grant. The workshop was great, we were briefed in the intricacies of managing the consortia including data management and thinking critically about best use of the funding for optimal scientific outcomes. Immediately after, it was an absolute pleasure to visit the Cruceanu and Lopez Labs at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm as part of our NeSTED consortium’s inaugural meeting. We are now busy planning our next online symposia happening in September and very much looking forward to the scientific outputs of this.
On the research front, we are excited to welcome our first USYD student to our lab next semester; Jooya Kalantar will completing his Honours thesis on understanding how stress impacts the blood brain barrier. It’s also been wonderful to have some long-term projects out as publications. First of all, our PhD student Amber has celebrated the milestone of publishing her first first-author publication, and most importantly, received our lab tradition of her publication mug! We have also had several publications accepted by our co-supervised PhD student Helena in Lezanne Ooi’s lab at the University of Wollongong, Sophie in Naguib Mechawar’s Lab at McGill University, and our colleagues Anna and Natan in Elisabeth Binder’s Lab at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich:
- Curry AR, Ooi L, Matosin N. How spatial omics approaches can be used to map the biological impacts of stress in psychiatric disorders: a perspective, overview and technical guide. Special issue: ‘Beyond the Surface: Multi-Omics Insights into Stress and its Effects’. Stress: the International Journal on the Biology of Stress. Article 2351394 . [IF=2.3]
- Targas Dias Anastacio H, Matosin N, Ooi L. Familial Alzheimer’s Disease Neurons Bearing Mutations in PSEN1 Display Increased Calcium Responses to AMPA as an Early Calcium Dysregulation Phenotype. Life [IF=3.2]
- Simard S, Matosin N, Mechawar N. Adult hippocampal neurogenesis in the human brain: updates, challenges, and perspectives. The Neuroscientist. 2024 May 17:10738584241252581 [IF=7.3]
- Yusupov N , Roeh S, Sotillos Elliot L, Chang S, Loganathan S, Urbina-Treviño L, Fröhlich A, Sauer S, Ködel M, Matosin N, Czamara D, Deussing JM, Binder EB. DNA methylation patterns of FKBP5 regulatory regions in brain and blood of humanized mice and humans. Accepted, Molecular Psychiatry. [IF=11]
- Fröhlich AS, Gerstner N, Gagliardi M, Ködel M, Yusupov N, Matosin N, Czamara D, Sauer S, Roeh S, Murek V, Chatzinakos C, Daskalakis NP, Knauer-Arloth J, Ziller MJ, Binder EB. Cell-type-specific ageing effects in the human OFC and implications for psychiatric disease. In press. Nature Neuroscience 2024. [IF=25.0]
In BIG news, we are very excited to be expanding our team, with recruitment for two postdoctoral scientists underway. Applications are opened for four weeks, closing June 27. These are fully funded three year positions providing training in cutting-edge single-cell and spatial omics technologies and their analysis, and entry into our global network in the fields of stress and psychiatric illness. If interested in joining our shenanigans, see our “Work with us” page for more information and how to apply.
Last of all, this year I have been co-chair with Dr Christina Perry of the local organising committee for the Biological Psychiatry Australia conference happening in Sydney on the 3-5 November 2024. We are carefully curating an engaging program for BPA this year with a broad scope of talks, social events, and plenty of time and space for posters and networking. The conference is occurring back-to-back with the Society for Mental Health Research (SMHR) conference, presenting a great opportunity to couple the conferences and get your neuroscience and mental health research fix all at once. If you have any questions about the conference feel free to reach out. General abstract submissions will be opening soon, and we hope to see everyone there!
