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Research infrastructures
The AMH Initiative benefits from a number of important infrastructures that enable research in translational psychiatry. In particular, the Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank (DBCBB), located at the Douglas Institute is one of the largest brain repositories in the world that contains brains from psychiatrically-characterized individuals. With an inventory of over 3,500 specimens, it distributes thousands of samples annually to qualified researchers throughout the world helping to advance fundamental research on mental illness.
Research programs
The AMH Initiative provides funding to support collaborative projects between McGill and MPIP researchers. These start-up funds are used towards activities for the pilot project, including trainee support and travel exchanges. Below is the list of funded collaborative projects that are currently in progress.
Large-scale integration of single-cell transcriptome data to assess symptom-based molecular markers spanning mental illnesses
This collaboration will generate one of the largest human single-cell datasets to date with data from diseased and neurotypical brains
Does insulin have a causal role in the relationship between early life adversity and altered executive function phenotypes?
This study will determine if ELA is critical for the causal association between fasting insulin and altered executive functioning phenotypes
miR-151a-5p in plasma brain-derived extracellular vesicles as a prognostic biomarker of differential response to antidepressant treatment
Studying the impact of early-life adversity on hippocampal oligodendrocytes and myelination: a translational study
The first comprehensive study of oligodendrocyte-lineage cells and myelination in the hippocampus of humans and mice exposed to ELA
Implementing deep learning tools to measure social behavior in male and female mice prior and following social defeat stress in adolescence
Application of deep learning tools will allow for more ethologically relevant study of adolescent social defeat stress on behaviour and dopamine signaling
Isolation of CNS-derived exosomes in the DetECT pilot study
The aim of this collaborative project is to characterize the temporal post-ECT dynamics of blood-based CNS-derived exosomes to deepen our understanding of immediate and delayed ECT-induced changes
Identifying a common biological response to early life adversity across distinct rodent models
Using this approach, this study will attempt to capture a shared response to stress that can discriminate those individuals who will respond differently to the ELA i.e., differentiate between resilient and vulnerable individuals
Investigating the role of microRNAs and isomiRs as biomarkers in psychiatric disorders
This project will apply a modified library preparation approach (developed in the Flores lab) to sequence miRNAs from blood obtained from 2 cohorts (BeCOME and OPTIMA) to further investigate circulating miRNA profiles in mental disorders
The early-life exposome and its relations to psychopathology, neurodevelopment, and DNA methylation
Studying all available information about environmental exposures in two longitudinal birth cohorts of mothers and children (MAVAN and ALSPAC), this collaborative project will assess its associations with psychiatric and neurodevelopmental outcomes and DNA methylation, with the objective of developing an early-life exposome model.
Testing the neuroinflammatory theory of depression with well-characterized brain and plasma samples: a special focus on the effects of child abuse
This collaboration will constitute the first comprehensive study of inflammation-relevant markers in the brain and in the periphery of adult depressed patients, with or without a history of child abuse, and will contribute to further understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying the lasting impact of child abuse on brain and behaviour.
AMH postdoctoral fellowship program
Through this program, the AMH Initiative awarded funding to support trainees at the postdoctoral level. Congratulations to all award recipients and best of luck on their projects!
- Reza Rahimian, PhD (PI: Mechawar), for his project entitled, Characterizing the innate immune response in the brain of depressed suicides who were victims of child abuse (2022)
- Euclides José de Mendonça Filho, PhD (PI: Silveira), for his project entitled, Development and implementation of a pediatric battery of biological stress activation study (2022)
- Radu G. Avramescu, MD (PI: Flores), for his project entitled, Translational investigation of molecular markers and mediators of vulnerability to adverse experiences in adolescence study (2023)
- Patrícia Maidana Miguel, PhD (PI: Silveira), for her project entitled, Childhood adversity and the susceptibility to adult physical and mental health problems – a genome-wide environment interaction study (2023)
- Badr Ait Hammou, PhD (PI: Bzdok), for his project entitled, Exploring LLM-enabled data augmentation and label generation to revisit human consciousness (2023)
- Sierra Codeluppi, PhD (PI: Turecki), for her project entitled, Uncovering the spatially resolved transcriptomic gene profile in the human Dorsal and Median raphe in context of depression and antidepressant treatment (2024)
- Alice Morgunova, PhD (PI: Flores), for her project entitled, Characterizing circulating microRNAs across development and in depression disorder (2024)
