Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige was recently promoted from post-doctoral scholar to Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD. Funded by the TRDRP New Investigator Award, Sandra will derive psychiatric phenotypes from electronic health records from one of the largest biobanks in the US, BioVU, to perform genetic studies of substance use disorders. Sandra is also receiving funds from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD Young Investigator Award) to validate some of the human genetic findings using animal models.

Congratulations, Sandra!

Amy Lee, an undergraduate student working under Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson, presented a poster titled, “Glyoxalase 1 inhibition is a potential novel therapeutic target in chronic ethanol withdrawal” at the annual Judd Symposium held at UCSD on April 15th. Other authors include Dr. Barkley-Levenson and Dr. Abraham Palmer.

Dr. Abraham Palmer recently organized a visit for Sweetwater High School students to visit UCSD and attend the annual Judd Symposium.

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented the talk, “Using genome wide association studies
in mice, rats and humans to gain molecular insights into behavioral and physiological traits” at the Progress in the Science of Medicine (PRISM) lecture series on April 8th.

Dr. Amanda Barkey-Levenson received the IBANGS Young Investigator Travel Award for travel to the annual International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland May 10th-14th.

Congratulations, Amanda!

The article, “Genomic Basis of Delayed Reward Discounting,” has been accepted for publication in Behavioural Processes. Dr. Abraham Palmer and Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige are co-authors along with Joshua Gray, James MacKillop, and Harriet de Wit.

Highlights from the paper:
• Delayed reward discounting (DRD) is a measure of capacity to delay gratification.

• DRD is moderately heritable and associated with mental, physical, and social outcomes.

• DRD is a component of Research Domain Criteria and a putative target for treatment.

• The largest GWAS to date yielded a SNP heritability of 12% and one significant

Apurva Chitre gave a talk at the MEDINSPIRE, an international multidisciplinary medical conference  hosted on 14th – 17th February 2019 in Mumbai, India.
The talk title was “Genome wide association study of body weight, body mass index, adiposity, and fasting glucose in 3,173 outbred rats”. Apurva won the Best oral presentation Award in the Physiology category. Congratulations!

The article, “Multidimensional latent structure of risk-related phenotypes in healthy young adults,” has been accepted for publication in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. Dr. Palmer is a co-author along with Elisa Pabon, James MacKillop, and Harriet de Wit.

Dr. Palmer gave a talk entitled “Collaboration with 23andMe to study the genetic basis of impulsivity: implications for smoking” at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT) on Feb 21, 2019, as part of a session titled “genetic basis of addiction and tobacco-related diseases.”

Dr. Palmer visited 23andMe on February 20, 2019, and gave a talk titled “Genetic approaches to understanding the biological basis of behavior”.