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MQ is happy to announce that Dr Alexandre Lussier from the Lussier Lab at Massachusetts Common Hospital has been awarded an MQ Fellowship. Alexandre is learning extent to which the timing of kid and adolescent melancholy interacts with genetic susceptibility to affect suicide danger in early maturity.
Please give a quick abstract of your educational profession thus far:
Through the years, my educational profession has progressed from being narrowly targeted on molecular mechanisms to investigating broader social and organic elements that contribute to well being.
I obtained a BSc in Biochemistry from McGill College in 2012 and a PhD in Medical Genetics from the College of British Columbia in 2017. My doctoral analysis targeted on the influence of prenatal alcohol publicity on epigenomic and transcriptomic patterns in animal fashions and medical cohorts of people with fetal alcohol spectrum dysfunction (FASD).
Following my PhD, I skilled in computational biology and statistical genetics at Cornell College, engaged on X chromosome variation and psychiatric illness. After this transient fellowship, I started my postdoctoral coaching in psychiatric and genetic epidemiology on the Massachusetts Common Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical College (HMS). My postdoctoral analysis investigated the function of delicate durations and epigenetic mechanisms in linking early-life environments to psychological sickness.
As of April 2023, I’ve transitioned to an Teacher function at MGH and HMS (equal to Assistant Professor), which has allowed me to start out my very own analysis group. Our work broadly focuses on figuring out social and organic mechanisms that be used to forestall and deal with psychopathology throughout the life course.
How lengthy have you ever been at your present college/establishment?
I’ve labored at MGH and HMS since I started my postdoctoral research in April 2019 (4.5 years in the past).
What’s your space of examine?
My analysis focuses on the function of prenatal, childhood, and adolescent stressors and environments in shaping psychological well being trajectories. Particularly, my analysis group at MGH makes use of translational approaches to determine social and organic elements that may assist predict, forestall, and deal with psychopathology throughout growth. We analysis the function of delicate durations and epigenetic mechanisms in linking early-life environments to psychological sickness throughout the life course.
As a part of my MQ fellows award, I now have the chance to increase this work to look at the influence of melancholy throughout childhood and adolescence as a danger issue for suicide. By means of this analysis, I goal to determine delicate durations when melancholy has a better influence on suicide danger, in addition to genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that may be leveraged to raised predict danger for psychological sickness and develop extra well timed and focused intervention methods.
What motivated you to review this space? Do you could have a private connection to the topic?
Suicide analysis is unquestionably underrepresented within the psychological well being world, as it’s a tough subject to method and examine. Mixed with the widespread influence of current world occasions on psychological sickness in younger individuals and adults, analysis on this space feels notably necessary and related. Like most individuals, I even have private connections to psychological well being and my work on this space is likely one of the methods I can contribute to lowering the general burden of psychological sickness.
What are you hoping to find or obtain because of your analysis?
Within the long-term, I hope the outcomes of this mission will result in new prediction instruments and interventions that can be utilized to forestall suicide in youth affected by psychological sickness and misery. These new instruments would possibly embody genetic and epigenetic prediction algorithms to foretell future danger for suicide, or interventions which are timed for durations of improve vulnerability. Finally, I hope my work will assist extra individuals lead comfortable, wholesome, and profitable lives.
How do you’re feeling about getting the Fellows award from MQ?
I’m deeply honoured to obtain an MQ Fellows award and really excited to conduct this analysis. This award offers a singular alternative to finish some necessary work within the subject of suicide analysis, which I may not have had the possibility to finish in any other case. I’m very grateful for the help of MQ and their perception within the potential influence of this work.
How necessary is funding in analysis for the development of our understanding of Psychological well being situations and coverings?
Analysis is likely one of the foundational pillars of psychological well being and it’s important to speculate in the direction of our understanding of psychological problems and their remedies. The psychological well being subject is continually evolving, and with out analysis to check and validate our fashions and prolong our understanding of psychological sickness, remedy methods could go down paths which have the alternative impact, or divest funds which may be more practical somewhere else. Analysis is the important thing to understanding and creating higher interventions to forestall and deal with psychological well being situations.
Is there the rest you wish to say?
I wish to thank MQ and its sponsors for supporting my analysis, in addition to all of the individuals who make this work potential, together with examine contributors, households, clinicians, individuals with lived expertise, fellow researchers, and many others. I might additionally encourage everybody to contribute to psychological well being nevertheless they will – be it serving to out a neighbour, good friend, or member of the family, taking part in analysis, or giving again to native communities and organizations invested in psychological well being help, funding, and analysis.
Alexandre’s analysis is supported by the MQ Basis. You possibly can learn extra about his analysis right here.
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