Position: Royce Abbey Postdoctoral Fellow (2008) Griffiths Research Fellow until then

Email: elscarr@unimelb.edu.au

Homepage: http://www.cns.unimelb.edu.au/research/schizophrenia/

Phone: (03) 9389 2990

Fax: (03) 9387 5061

Campus: Rebecca L. Cooper Research Laboratories, 155 Oak St, Parkville

Research Interests:

Understanding the biochemical changes associated with psychiatric disorders, in particular schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The main focus of my current research is the role of muscarinic receptors in the pathology of schizophrenia. The majority of my work is carried out using human brains, obtained postmortem, form subjects with psychiatric disorders or no history of psychiatric illness.

Techniques Used:

In situ radioligand binding with autoradiography, in situ hybridization with autoradiography, cell culture, electrophoresis with Western blotting, enzymatic assays.

Student Opportunities:

The number of projects being offered at any one time varies, depending on the supervisory load that exists. Projects are offered to students at Honours, Masters and PhD level.

Students must be aware that because of the nature of the tissue they will be coming into contact with, that it is a requirement that they have a current tetanus booster and undertake the full course of vaccination against Hepatitis B.

Relevant Publications (2007)

Scarr, E., Sundram, S., Keriakous, D. & Dean, B. (2007) Altered hippocampal muscarinic M4, but not M1, receptor expression from subjects with schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry 61: 1161-1170.

McCullumsmith, R.E., Kristiansen, L.K., Beneyto, M., Scarr, E., Dean, B. & Meador-Woodruff, J.H. (2007). Decreased NR1, NR2A, and SAP102 transcript expression in the hippocampus in bipolar disorder. Brain Research. 1127(1):108-18.

Dean, B., Keriakous, D., Scarr, E. & Thomas, E. (In Press, accepted December 2006). Gene expression profiling in Brodmann's area 46 from subjects with schizophrenia. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

Dean, B., Digney, A., Sundram, S., Thomas, E. & Scarr, E. (In Press, accepted May, 2007). Plasma apolipoprotein E is decreased in schizophrenia spectrum and bipolar disorder. Psychiatric Research.

McOmish, C.E., Burrows, E., Howard, M., Scarr, E., Kim, D., Shin, H.-S., Dean, B., van den Buuse, M. & Hannan, A.J. (In Press, accepted June 2007). Phospholipase C-?1 knockout mice exhibit endophenotypes modeling schizophrenia which are rescued by environmental enrichment and clozapine administration.

Shirly, A., Galit, S. Liad, M., Alon, S., Dean, B., Scarr, E., Yuly, B., Belmaker RH, and Agam, G. (In Press) Possible involvement of post dopamine D2 receptor signaling components in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.