个人简介

Paul has a keen interest in understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of diseases, so that better diagnoses and treatment strategies can be developed. He completed a BSc (Hon) Class 1 (1985-1989) and a PhD (awarded 1995) from the University of Newcastle, Australia. He then travelled to the USA (1995-1998) and completed post-doctoral research at the University of Wisconsin. His research background during his PhD and postdoctoral work was in cancer biology where he gained experience in cellular and molecular biology techniques. In March 1998, Paul returned to Australia and took the opportunity to focus on the neurobiology of schizophrenia and joined the Schizophrenia Research Institute (formerly the Neuroscience Institute of Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders) as a Research Officer (1998-2000) and Senior Research Officer (2000-2004). In 2004, Paul was appointed to an academic position in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, Faculty of Health University of Newcastle. Paul’s research from 1998 to date has focused on the neurobiology and genetics underpinning schizophrenia. He has conducted and collaborated on world-class studies detailing the changes to gene expression in the brain and also the blood from patients with schizophrenia. These studies showed that people with schizophrenia have distinct changes in their expression of genes in their brains and the blood. Interestingly many of these studies suggest changes in genes that have roles in the immune system and inflammatory processes/ As part of these efforts Paul played a major role in the establishment of the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank (ASRB), which recruits participants with schizophrenia and controls and collects clinical and cognitive data as well as blood samples for genetic analysis and MRI structural brain scans from the participants. This huge data resource is currently being investigated by many groups to improve our understanding of what causes schizophrenia so that we can better identify who is likely to develop schizophrenia so that we can identify new treatments or preventative strategies for this devastating disorder. More recently Paul established two new projects. One project is investigating why people with schizophrenia have more inhibitory interneurons in the white matter underneath the cortex of brain regions known to be affected in schizophrenia. The other project is investigating the levels of auto-antibodies directed against neuronal antigens in people with schizophrenia.

研究领域

Pharmacy and Experimental Pharmacology

Paul's research expertise is in cell and molecular biology. His research efforts during his PhD and postdoctoral training were directed at cancer biology using standard cell culture assays, immunofluorescnece labling of cultured cells, flow cytometry and molecular biology techniques. Since 1998, Paul has focused on the neurobiology of schizophrenia and has developed additional experience with molecular techniques to study gene expression changes in brain and blood samples. He also has experience in using immunolablelling techniques (immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry) coupled with microscopy and cell counting to study changes in neurons in the brains of people with schizophrenia and in rodent models.

近期论文

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2016 Duchatel RJ, Jobling P, Graham BA, Harms LR, Michie PT, Hodgson DM, Tooney PA, 'Increased white matter neuron density in a rat model of maternal immune activation - Implications for schizophrenia', Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 65 118-126 (2016) 2016 Hess JL, Tylee DS, Barve R, de Jong S, Ophoff RA, Kumarasinghe N, et al., 'Transcriptome-wide mega-analyses reveal joint dysregulation of immunologic genes and transcription regulators in brain and blood in schizophrenia', Schizophrenia Research, (2016) 2016 Mehta D, Tropf FC, Gratten J, Bakshi A, Zhu Z, Bacanu SA, et al., 'Evidence for Genetic Overlap Between Schizophrenia and Age at First Birth in Women.', JAMA Psychiatry, 73 497-505 (2016) 2016 Sekar A, Bialas AR, de Rivera H, Davis A, Hammond TR, Kamitaki N, et al., 'Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component 4', Nature, (2016) 2016 Srinivasan S, Bettella F, Mattingsdal M, Wang Y, Witoelar A, Schork AJ, et al., 'Genetic Markers of Human Evolution Are Enriched in Schizophrenia', Biological Psychiatry, 80 284-292 (2016) 2016 Wang Y, Thompson WK, Schork AJ, Holland D, Chen C-H, Bettella F, et al., 'Leveraging Genomic Annotations and Pleiotropic Enrichment for Improved Replication Rates in Schizophrenia GWAS', PLOS Genetics, 12 e1005803-e1005803 (2016) 2016 Franke B, Stein JL, Ripke S, Anttila V, Hibar DP, van Hulzen KJE, et al., 'Genetic influences on schizophrenia and subcortical brain volumes: large-scale proof of concept', Nature Neuroscience, (2016) 2015 Bulik-Sullivan B, Loh PR, Finucane HK, Ripke S, Yang J, Patterson N, et al., 'LD score regression distinguishes confounding from polygenicity in genome-wide association studies', Nature Genetics, 47 291-295 (2015) [C1] 2015 Bergon A, Belzeaux R, Comte M, Pelletier F, Hervé M, Gardiner EJ, et al., 'CX3CR1 is dysregulated in blood and brain from schizophrenia patients', Schizophrenia Research, 168 434-443 (2015) [C1] 2015 Green MJ, Raudino A, Cairns MJ, Wu J, Tooney PA, Scott RJ, Carr VJ, 'Do common genotypes of FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5) moderate the effects of childhood maltreatment on cognition in schizophrenia and healthy controls?', Journal of Psychiatric Research, 70 9-17 (2015) [C1] 2015 Wu JQ, Green MJ, Gardiner EJ, Tooney PA, Scott RJ, Carr VJ, Cairns MJ, 'Altered neural signaling and immune pathways in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of schizophrenia patients with cognitive impairment: A transcriptome analysis', Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, (2015) [C1] 2015 Vilhjálmsson BJ, Yang J, Finucane HK, Gusev A, Lindström S, Ripke S, et al., 'Modeling Linkage Disequilibrium Increases Accuracy of Polygenic Risk Scores', American Journal of Human Genetics, 97 576-592 (2015) [C1] 2015 Finucane HK, Bulik-Sullivan B, Gusev A, Trynka G, Reshef Y, Loh P-R, et al., 'Partitioning heritability by functional annotation using genome-wide association summary statistics', Nature Genetics, 47 1228-1235 (2015) [C1] 2015 Loh P-R, Bhatia G, Gusev A, Finucane HK, Bulik-Sullivan BK, Pollack SJ, et al., 'Contrasting genetic architectures of schizophrenia and other complex diseases using fast variance-components analysis', Nature Genetics, 47 1385-1392 (2015) [C1] 2015 Ingason A, Giegling I, Hartmann AM, Genius J, Konte B, Friedl M, et al., 'Expression analysis in a rat psychosis model identifies novel candidate genes validated in a large case¿control sample of schizophrenia', Translational Psychiatry, 5 e656-e656 (2015) [C1] 2015 Cropley VL, Scarr E, Fornito A, Klauser P, Bousman CA, Scott R, et al., 'The effect of a muscarinic receptor 1 gene variant on grey matter volume in schizophrenia', Psychiatry Research - Neuroimaging, 234 182-187 (2015) [C1] 2014 Oldmeadow C, Mossman D, Evans TJ, Holliday EG, Tooney PA, Cairns MJ, et al., 'Combined analysis of exon splicing and genome wide polymorphism data predict schizophrenia risk loci.', J Psychiatr Res, 52 44-49 (2014) [C1] 2014 Gusev A, Lee SH, Trynka G, Finucane H, Vilhjálmsson BJ, Xu H, et al., 'Partitioning Heritability of Regulatory and Cell-Type-Specific Variants across 11 Common Diseases', The American Journal of Human Genetics, 95 535-552 (2014) [C1] 2014 McCarthy-Jones S, Green MJ, Scott RJ, Tooney PA, Cairns MJ, Wu JQ, et al., 'Preliminary evidence of an interaction between the FOXP2 gene and childhood emotional abuse predicting likelihood of auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia', JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH, 50 66-72 (2014) [C1]