Jean Giacomotto

Unveiling the pathogenicity of genes recently associated with mental disorders

Our laboratory uses diverse state-of-the-art approaches to try understanding and developing new drugs for mental disorders and Schizophrenia in particular. We start from Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) for identifying risk-genes to further study their role in cell lines and animal models. We are currently establishing a pipeline aiming to use the zebrafish animal model to test/observe the neuropathogenicity of the identified gene candidates in regard to brain structure and function. We have position for candidates aiming at learning genome editing techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9 and high-end microscopy. These projects are of high potential and should lead to post-PhD project/appointment and high impact publications. In the long term, this work aims at better understanding the mechanisms involved in the onset, progress and severity of mental disorders. The candidates would benefit from a very highly competitive environment, with international expert and collaborations in the feild.

Drug discovery and big pharma partnership to find new neuroactive drugs

The zebrafish is becoming is prime model for drug discovery. We have been leader in the use of small animal models in drug discovery, and may be some of the very first from identification of a compound in the lab to a drug in clinics. Small animal models such as the zebrafish are compatible with industrial drug discovery techniques such as High Throughput Screening (HTS). We are working at recapitulating human diseases in this organism and try to establish models with early phenotype that can be observed/quantified through automatic readout. We have for instance developed versatile models of neurodegeneration that could help identify/develop drugs against neurodegenerative and motor neuron diseases. We have a set of projects aiming at either i) developing new models that would fit our screening pipeline and/or ii) using the current models to run drug discovery programs and translation (mouse validation via collabs). These projects are strongly bond with the pharma industry and highly collaborative which would be ideal for candidates aiming to join the industry or work in a multidisciplinary environment.

See attached link for example (https://sites.google.com/view/giacomotto-lab/areas-of-interest?authuser=0)

Developing models of motor neuron disease

Our third research direction aims at developping models of motor neuron degeneration or neurodegeneration per se. This project takes benefit of collaborations of excellence and aims at better understanding the pathogenic mechanisms that could trigger or modulate neurodegeneration. This project is also working synergistically with our drug discovery programs to try finding compounds/drugs able to reduce or stop neurodegenetion. It is noteworthy that this program is bond to laboratories in Europe and North America, garanteeing a highly productive environment, travel opportunuities as well as postdoc options post-PhD. Interestingly, we would have great funding opportunuities for the right candidate and fellowship option post-PhD, which would help tremendously in career development.

https://sites.google.com/view/giacomotto-lab/home?authuser=0

Short term, long term and transgenerational effect of current antipsychotic and antidepressant medications.

We are looking at studying the short term as well as the long term and transgenerational transcriptomic effect of current antipsychotic and antidepressant medications. This would be done using hte zebrafish animal models.