Three members of the Palmer Lab presented posters at the annual American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting in San Diego.

Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige presented a poster titled “Intersection of Impulsive Personality Traits and Drug Experimentation: A Genome-Wide Association Approach.” Dr. Amelie Baud presented a poster titled “Architecture of social genetic effects in laboratory mice.” Apurva Chitre presented a poster titled “Genome wide association study of body weight, body mass index, adiposity, and fasting glucose in 3,173 outbred rats.”

Dr. Abraham Palmer recently gave a talk at the at the 6th Annual Molecular Psychiatry Meeting in Kauai, Hawaii. His talk was titled, “Using GWAS, eQTL and PrediXcan (aka TWAS) to understand complex behavioral traits in mice and rats.”

A new U01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was awarded to Drs. Abraham Palmer, Dongjun Chung, Roberto Ciccocioppo, Gerard Thomas Hardiman, Peter Kalivas, and Leah Catherine Solberg Woods. The grant is titled “The Genetic Basis of Opioid Dependence Vulnerablility in a Rodent Model.”

Former lab member Amy Hart recently had a baby boy, named Leopold.

Congratulations, Amy!

Marijuana.com featured an interview with Dr. Palmer about the role of genetics in marijuana use in an article titled, “Study Examines What Role Genes Play for Marijuana Use.”

The article discusses his and Sandra Sanchez-Roige’s recent study published in Nature Neuroscience titled, “GWAS of lifetime cannabis use reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia.”

Palmer Lab undergraduate student, Amy Lee, gave a talk at the UC San Diego Summer Research Conference. Her talk was titled “The role of Glo1 enzyme activity on the severity of alcohol withdrawal in mice.” She completed research for this presentation after being awarded the Julia Brown Research Scholarship for Health and Medical Professions.

Great job, Amy!

Ariana Page has joined the Palmer Lab as a new lab assistant. She completed her undergrad at UC Santa Barbara where she studied behavioral neuroscience, and ultimately obtained a B.A. in Psychology. While at UCSB, she worked as a research assistant in the lab of Dr. Karen Szumlinski, assisting research which focused on bio-behavioral mechanisms underlying methamphetamine addiction in mouse models. More specifically, she conducted oral methamphetamine self-administration and place-conditioning studies in mice.

Welcome Ariana!

The article “’Genome-wide association study meta-analysis of the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT),” has been accepted for publication in The American Journal of Psychiatry. The article was written by Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Abraham Palmer, and other co-authors.

Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige’s project, titled “CADM2, a cell adhesion molecule, and its association with risk and psychopathology,” was selected for funding by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

The NARSAD Young Investigator Grant provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research. Two year awards are provided to enable promising investigators to either extend research fellowship training or begin careers as independent research faculty. See their website for more information.

Congratulations, Sandra!

Dr. Abraham Palmer was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) for his project titled “A Novel Pharmacotherapy for Alcoholism: Evaluation of Reward, Aversion, Compulsivity, Withdrawal & Reinstatement.” This is a five year grant that starts July 5, 2018 and ends April 30, 2023. This grant will fund a project to study how and why inhibitors of the enzyme GLO1 decrease ethanol drinking in mice and to develop GLO1 inhibitors for use as a therapy for alcohol use disorder.