ECNP Podcast — more information

Episode title: PRISM 2 project – Precision medicine for psychiatry: from brain function to behaviour

Martien Kas, The Netherlands
Martien Kas is professor of behavioral neuroscience at the Groningen Institute for evolutionary life sciences at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. The research of his group focuses on determinants of behavior, especially of behavioral strategies and of biological processes that are essential across species and that are affected in various neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., social interaction and sensory information processing). By means of cross-species genetic analysis of neurobehavioral traits (of mice and men), they aim to identify genotype-phenotype relationships relevant to the development and treatment of autism spectrum disorders, Alzheimer's Disease, eating disorders, and schizophrenia. These studies will lead to the understanding of conserved gene function in regulating essential behavioral strategies and will ultimately improve therapeutic and preventive strategies to contribute to healthy aging. In addition, he is Executive Committee Board member and President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), Editorial board member of Mammalian Genome, and project coordinator of the PRISM1 and PRISM2 projects, two large EU Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) projects that aim to unpick the biological reasons underlying social dysfunction, which is a common early symptom of Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and Major Depressive Disorder.

Hugh Marston,Germany
Hugh Marston is a senior vice-president and global head of CNS Research at Boehringer Ingelheim based at Biberach in Germany. Until recently he was a senior research fellow leading the translational neuroscience group at Lilly’s Erl Wood research site in Surrey. Having originally trained as a psychopharmacologist at Cambridge he has now had nearly 30 years’ experience in various forms of drug discovery research. Most recently as head of pharmacology at IOMet Pharma (pka TPP GD) a virtual pharma company acquired by Merck in 2016. Prior to that he has lead neuropharmacology teams at Merck, Schering-Plough and Organon working on projects principally in the psychiatry area from discovery through to launch. As such he has had a long standing interest in transforming our ability to translate science to and from the clinic across the neuroscience disciplines. As part of his role at Lilly he is project leader of the IMI2 PRISM initiative an industry/academe EU funded consortium that is seeking to find translatable, quantitative biological phenotypes in CNS disorders. He maintains an active interest in academic research through collaboration and an honorary professorship at the University of St Andrews with 70+ peer reviewed publications and five granted patents.

Abigail Abrahams, United Kingdom
Abigail Abrahams is a behavioral neuroscientist currently working as a senior scientist at P1vital Ltd. Abi has a BSc (Hons) degree in pharmacology from the University of Bristol, and a PhD in neuropsychopharmacology from the University of Nottingham, where she researched the neural mechanisms of oxytocin’s prosocial and antipsychotic-like effects. As a senior scientist at P1vital, Abi provides scientific expertise and leadership on a variety of R&D projects, including a leading role on the on the PRISM 2 project.