Research
Dr. Roder's ultimate goal is to discover new treatments for schizophrenia, anxiety, epilepsy, depression and other mental disorders. The various projects in the lab are being pursued by intelligent, hardworking and successful students and post-docs.
A student who just finished his PhD (Bechara Saab) showed the overexpression of neuronal calcium sensor 1 in part of the mouse brain led to enhanced cognition at the level of spatial learning, memory, and exploration. A current PhD student, Ho-suk Mun, is analyzing exploration in wild type mice treated with RNAi for ncs-1 and our ENU ncs-1 mutant that expresses less than half of wild type protein levels. Another new MD/PhD student is analyzing this pathway for mental illness (Enoch Ng). In 2007 we made mutant mice in the DISC1 gene which showed either schizophrenia or depression endophenotypes depending on the location of the mutation. A PDF in my lab (Tatiana Lipina) is studying all the genes in various brain regions altered in these mutant mice. An MSc student (Lia Mesbah-Oskui) showed that these DISC1-L100P mice have aberrant place cell firing, which is a new endophenotype for schizophrenia. Another MD student (Alex McGirr) made and characterized an ENU mutant in the PDE4B gene, which is known to interact with DISC1. His mice are resistant to PTSD. Another PhD thesis in 2011 by Greer Kirshenbaum showed our myshkin mice are a model for mania. A PhD thesis by Laleh Sinai showed that brain Src plays the role of LM in vivo. Another PhD student (Viviane Labrie) completed her PhD thesis on the role of D. serine in schizophrenia.
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