From Molecules to Mind: The HPA Axis in Mood, Metabolism, and Stress

Speakers

Carlos Forray, MD

Lundbeck Research USA
web site | publications

Carlos Forray has worked for more than 16 years in the discovery and target assessment of G-protein coupled receptors at Synaptic Pharmaceutical Corp and Lundbeck Research USA, where he led efforts in the discovery of small molecule ligands for GPCRs to enable in vivo target assessment and lead optimization. An integral part of these efforts involved the discovery of novel GPCRs activated by neuropeptides, as well as in the identification of endogenous ligands for orphan GPCRs. Currently his work is in the translational research arena, to support the development of new treatments for depression and anxiety.

Forray holds an MD degree from the National University of Mexico, and was a senior research fellow in pharmacology at the Mayo Clinic. Before joining Synaptic, Forray was an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy, and earlier associate professor at the Mexican Institute of Psychiatry, in Mexico City. Forray is a member of the Endocrine Society and the Society for Neuroscience.

Mary F. Dallman, PhD

University of California, San Francisco
e-mail | web site | publications

Mary Dallman majored in chemistry at Smith College, where she fell in love with the cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene ring structure of cholesterol and the steroid hormones. Since then, she has focused on the physiology of stress steroids during her PhD work in physiology at Stanford, and as a post-doctoral fellow and then as a faculty member in physiology at UCSF. Much of her work has entailed the study of the inhibitory feedback regulation of the brain-pituitary-adrenal stress axis by its final product, corticosterone. In the most recent years she has examined the effects of chronic stress on corticosteroids, and their effects on feeding behavior and obesity.

Zul Merali, PhD

University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research
Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre
e-mail | web site | publications

Zul Merali is president/CEO and scientific director of the University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research. He is also full professor in the faculties of Medicine (Departments of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Psychiatry) and Social Sciences (Psychology) at the University of Ottawa, as well as research professor at the Institute of Neuroscience at Carleton University.

Merali's research endeavors, supported by grants from CIHR and NSERC, strive to characterize the body's response to stressful and appetitive events, and the relationship of stressors (including early-life trauma) to mood and anxiety disorders. Another focus of his research is also to determine how pharmacological interventions (pharmaceutical and nutriceutical) may attenuate stress-induced pathophysiology. In this vein, he and his colleagues have been attempting to isolate anti-anxiety compounds from a variety of rare plants. Merali's research investigations extend from the behavioral to the cellular and molecular levels, and involve experimental animals as well as human subjects. Merali has published over a hundred scientific papers, more than 20 book chapters and over 100 conference presentations.

Alexandros N. Vgontzas, MD

Penn State College of Medicine
e-mail | web site | publications

Alexandros Vgontzas is a professor of psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine. He received his MD from the Faculty of Medicine University of Athens in 1978. He completed his residency at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

Sonia Lupien, PhD

McGill University
e-mail | web site | publications

Sonia Lupien is the founder and director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress at the Douglas Hospital in Montreal, Canada, and is a scientist affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. She received her PhD from the University of Montreal, and she completed postdoctoral research training at the University of California in San Diego and at Rockefeller University in New York. She leads the Laboratory of Human Stress Research that specializes in measuring the acute and chronic impact of stress hormones on learning and memory in human populations.

In 1998, Lupien found that high levels of stress hormones in older adults are linked to both memory impairments and atrophy of the hippocampus, a brain structure critical to memory and which shrinks as Alzheimer's disease progresses. Two years later, she showed that children from low socioeconomic status present higher levels of stress hormones, when compared to children from high socioeconomic status. Her future projects include a research program on detection and intervention for stress in the workplace, as well as the development of the DeStress for Success Program that aims at educating children and teenagers on stress and its impact on learning and memory.

Frank M. LaFerla, PhD

University of California, Irvine
e-mail | web site | publications

Frank LaFerla is professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, codirector of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia, and a fellow at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. LaFerla's research focuses on the molecular pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. The lab has shown that the intracellular domain of APP plays a physiologic role in phosphoinositide-mediated calcium signaling. Gamma-secretase inhibition affects this process, as do presenilin mutations. The lab also is conducting extensive research with its triple-transgene mouse.

LaFerla received his PhD in microbiology from the University of Minnesota in 1990. After a postdoctoral fellowship in virology at the American Red Cross, where he studied HIV, he became interested in how viral mechanisms get protein into the brain, and thus in neurobiology and Alzheimer's disease. He joined UC Irvine in 1995 and became professor in 2005. He has been recognized, among other honors, with the Ruth Salta Junior Investigator Achievement Award in Alzheimer's Disease Research, as a Zenith Fellow by the Alzheimer's Association, and with a MetLife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's disease in 2006.

Kathleen McGowan

Kathleen McGowan is a freelance magazine writer specializing in science and medicine.