Title of Winning Proposal: Shared Bipolar/Schizophrenia Susceptibility Genes on Chromosome 8p 

Dr. Falk W. Lohoff’s research interest is in the genetics of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, in particular in the genetic and phenotypic overlap between the two disorders. His laboratory is conducting genetic case-control association studies of candidate genes in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in order to identify genetic risk profiles. Current projects include the identification of the vesicular monoamine transporter 1 gene as susceptibility factor for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

After receiving his medical education from Humboldt University Berlin and Thomas Jefferson University, Dr. Lohoff pursued residency training in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. During that time he was selected for the NIMH “Clinical Research Scholar Program” at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Lohoff received numerous awards including the Seed Grant Award by the American Medical Association, the NIMH Outstanding Resident Award and the Society for Biological Psychiatry Travel Award. He served as reviewer for multiple journals including the American Journal of Psychiatry, the European Journal of Neurology, Behavior and Brain Function and Neuroscience Letters.

International/Schizophrenia Category:

International Winner: Catherine Abbo, MBChB, M.Med (Psych)
Institution: Butabika Psychiatric Hospital: Makerere University Mental School
Butabika Psychiatric Hospital
P.O. Box 7017
Kampala, Uganda

Title of Winning Proposal: Traditional Healers’ Management of Schizophrenia in Busoga, Uganda

Dr. Catherine Abbo is a staff psychiatrist heading the Forensic Unit at Butabika Psychiatric Hospital in Uganda. She received her medical degree from Makerere University Medical School in 1998. Following her internship, Dr. Abbo joined the same University for a master’s program in Psychiatry and graduated in 2003 as a psychiatrist.

Dr. Abbo has now enrolled for a Ph.D. joint program at Makerere University and Karolinska Institute of Sweden sponsored by Sida/SAREC. Her area of interest in research is Transcultural Psychiatry, specifically, traditional medical practices and mental illness. For her Ph.D. thesis, she intends to study the outcome of African traditional healing practices in mental illness. With this award, Dr. Abbo will be able to study schizophrenia, specifically the traditional diagnostic system and treatment outcome using African traditional medical practices.

After this research experience, Dr. Abbo hopes to continue in the field of Transcultural Psychiatry and start up a Transcultural Psychiatry Unit in her hospital’s Department of Psychiatry, with the main objective to research and provide training in Transcultural Psychiatry.

She is married and has two children, age eight and two years old.


International Winner: Paola Dazzan, M.D., M.Sc., MRCPsych
Institution: Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London
Division of Psychological Medicine
P.O. 63
De Crespigny, London SE5 8AF, UK

Title of Winning Proposal: Do Typical and Atypical Antipsychotics Have Different Effects on Brain Function? A Study Using fMRI

Dr. Paola Dazzan is a Clinical Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry (London), and a Consultant Psychiatrist in a First Episode Psychosis Team. She obtained her Medical Degree in Italy, and then moved to the United Kingdom to complete her specialist training and pursue an academic career. Dr. Dazzan’s interest in neuroimaging started in 1997, while working as a visiting fellow with Dr. P. Barta at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1998, she joined the Institute of Psychiatry and started working with Professor R.M. Murray. There, she was trained in the use of voxel-based methods of image analysis, under the supervision of Professor P.K. McGuire. This has provide Dr. Dazzan with the opportunity to develop her own line of research on the anatomical correlates of minor neurological abnormalities, on the effect of antipsychotics on brain structure and on progressive brain structural changes following the first psychotic episode. This work was the basis of her Ph.D., which she completed in 2005.

The Young Minds in Psychiatry Award will allow Dr. Dazzan to expand this work using both structural and functional neuroimaging.

United States/Schizophrenia Category:

R. Andrew Chambers, M.D.
Institution: Indiana University School of Medicine
Research and Sponsored Programs
620 Union Drive, Room 618
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5167 

Title of the Winning Proposal: Adolescent Development Trajectory of Prefrontal Synaptic Spine Density in Rat Models of Schizophrenia

Dr. R. Andrew Chambers is a 1991 graduate of Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, where he majored in chemical physics. He earned his medical degree at Duke University (1996).

There, he spent a year working in Dr. Ed Levin’s lab learning basic behavioral neuroscience and studying nicotine effects in an animal model of schizophrenia, involving techniques taught to him by Dr. Barbara Lipska at the National Institutes of Mental Health.

Dr. Chambers went on to residency and fellowship training in psychiatry and translational neuroscience at Yale University (2002), where under the mentorship of Dr. David Self, he worked to characterize a neurodevelopmental animal model of substance disorder vulnerability schizophrenia. As of 2003, Dr. Chambers is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and Director of the Laboratory for Translational Research of Dual Diagnosis Disorders. This research program, supported by a Career Award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, focuses on exploring the neural mechanisms underlying substance disorder vulnerability across differential forms of mental illness, and the role of adolescent neurodevelopment in these processes.

His APA/AstraZeneca Young Minds Award will support investigations on the adolescent-age developmental trajectory of frontal cortical neuronal morphology in animal models of schizophrenia.