Featured Postdoc: Eva Lancaster

Featured Postdoc: Eva Lancaster

By Walker Rogers

Eva Lancaster is a post-doctoral fellow at VIPBG and an alumnus of the Quantitative Human Genetics PhD program at the VCU School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Mary Washington. During her time in graduate school, Eva worked in the labs of Drs. Roxann Roberson-Nay and Timothy York. Her dissertation concentrated on bolstering the interpretability and underlying methodology of DNA methylation studies, and she ...

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VIPBG Faculty Receive Funding to Study AUD and PTSD Through NIAAA R01 Grant

VIPBG Faculty Receive Funding to Study AUD and PTSD Through NIAAA R01 Grant

Drs. Ananda Amstadter (VCU) and Abigail Lott (Emory) were recently funded to study models of comorbidity between alcohol use disorder (AUD) and post traumatic stress disorder (GTP) through a new NIAAA R01 (AA030549). They are joined by Co-Is from VCU (Drs. Sheerin and Bacanu), Emory (Drs. Micholopous, Ressler), SUNY (Dr. Peterson), and University of Windsor (Dr. Rappaport). AUD and PTSD commonly co-occur.

Directional models of comorbidity exist, self-medication ...

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Drs. Elizabeth Prom-Wormley and Hermine Maes Receive Funding for Their Resist! Project

Drs. Elizabeth Prom-Wormley and Hermine Maes Receive Funding for Their Resist! Project

Drs.Elizabeth Prom-Wormley and Hermine Maes recently received funding for their Resist! Project (R01 DA054313). The goal of this project is to index individual resistance to psychoactive substance use (SU) during adolescence and use the indices to identify factors influencing resistance into early middle adulthood, with a special focus on potentially modifiable factors.

We will also use a concept mapping approach to identify novel factors and a genetically-informed study design to account for genetic confounding. This project addresses ...

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Featured Student: Mallory Stephenson

Featured Student: Mallory Stephenson

By Walker Rogers

Mallory is a third-year doctoral candidate in the Integrative Life Sciences – Behavioral & Statistical Genetics program at VIPBG. She works in the lab of Dr. Alexis Edwards, whose research focuses on the genetic aspects of internalizing and substance use disorders. Mallory traces her love of science back to her grade school days in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia, where she attended a science and technology-focused magnet school. She was involved in both psychology ...

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The 2022 VIPBG Excellence Awards Announced

The 2022 VIPBG Excellence Awards Announced

The Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics pre- and post-doc awards were announced on December 15, 2022. This year, the awardees include Mohammad Ahangari, who received the Kenneth S. Kendler Award for Excellence in Pre-Doctoral Research, and Severine Lannoy, Ph.D., who accepted the Lindon Eaves Post-Doctoral Award. Mr. Ahangari has been working with Brien Riley, Ph.D., and Dr. Lannoy has been working with Alexis Edwards, Ph.D.

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Awards, Postdocs, Students

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Evaluating the role of common risk variation in the recurrence risk of schizophrenia in multiplex schizophrenia families

Evaluating the role of common risk variation in the recurrence risk of schizophrenia in multiplex schizophrenia families

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe, clinically heterogeneous psychiatric disorder with a population prevalence of ~1% [1]. Twin, family, and adoption studies consistently show a strong genetic component, with heritability estimates of around 0.75–0.80 [2,3,4,5,6], and family history (FH) remains the strongest risk factor for developing SCZ [7]. Despite high heritability, ~2/3 of SCZ cases report no FH of psychotic illness, and most subjects with a positive FH (FH+) report only a single affected relative [8, 9], concordant with the rates ...

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Genome-wide analysis of schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis identifies shared genomic loci with mixed direction of effects

Genome-wide analysis of schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis identifies shared genomic loci with mixed direction of effects

In the last decade, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified a large number of common genetic risk variants associated with complex human phenotypes (Visscher et al., 2017). Many genetic variants identified by GWAS exhibit varying degrees of genetic pleiotropy (Solovieff et al., 2013), and investigating the nature of these shared genetic risks is important for improving our understanding of the etiology and underlying genetic architecture of complex human disorders. A widely used method for assessing the genetic relationship between two ...

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CILSE doctoral candidate awarded NIH/NIDA grant

CILSE doctoral candidate awarded NIH/NIDA grant

Daniel Bustamante, a Ph.D. candidate in VCU Integrative Life Sciences doctoral program with a concentration on Behavioral & Statistical Genetics, was awarded a National Institute of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) F31 grant.

Bustamante is the Principle Investigator studying the risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse disorder (SUD) as a result of traumatic experiences during childhood and early adolescence. The project, titled “Longitudinal neuroimaging and statistical genetics modeling of substance use and trauma-related phenotypes,” will study ...

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Featured Student: MadhurBain Singh

Featured Student: MadhurBain Singh

By Walker Rogers

Madhur is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Human and Molecular Genetics and is pursuing the quantitative genetics concentration. His academic journey so far has taken him all the way from the state of Punjab in India to Oslo, Norway to Richmond, Virginia. He holds a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.B.S.) degree and a master’s degree in International Social and Health Policy.

Madhur shifted from his career as a clinician ...

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