Meet Our Board Member Sandra Sanchez-Roige

Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego & Department of Medicine, Division of Genetic Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Editorial Board Member of Complex Psychiatry.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and the Department of Medicine, Division of Genetic Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). I co-lead the Sanchez-Roige lab with Lisa, a talented British Shorthair, and Margot, a curious three-year-old. Psychiatric geneticist, with emphasis on translational research, I am passionate about identifying the biological drivers that place people at risk for developing substance use disorders and comorbid physical and mental health conditions. I am a member of several international consortiums (Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, PsycheMERGE, Externalizing Consortium, Latin American Genomics Consortium), with the goal to improve mental health by advancing and translating research in psychiatric genetics through collaboration, communication and education. I am fortunate to work with stellar colleagues, most of whom are on the editorial board of this journal!

You and your team leverage phenomic and genomic tools to unravel the biology of substance use disorders. How did you become interested in this field?
The biggest challenge in medicine and psychiatry is how to improve health. But psychiatric disorders, and particularly substance use disorders, have complex histories. They derive from a dense context – genetics, environment, and their interactions. Substance use disorders are often chronic, yet treatable conditions. But the challenging reality is that existing treatments have only limited efficacy. Over the past decade, with the advent of genome-wide association studies, the field of psychiatric genetics has offered an outpour of discoveries. We have identified more than 200 genetic loci across a range of substance use disorders, and the list is expanding each year. Suddenly, there may be a cause for optimism that genetic research may impact clinical arenas and have important implications for diagnosis and treatment of such devastating conditions. Can genetics inform opportunities for “precision psychiatry”? Can we identify genetic variants that could serve as novel therapeutic targets? Can we, through our genomic discoveries, educate and reduce the stigma associated with substance use disorders? The ability to address these questions, and make an impact on the health of patients and their loved ones, is what attracted me to this field.

For more details visit the Sanchez-Roige Lab’s webpage and check their latest publications in Complex Psychiatry:

Identifying High-Risk Comorbidities Associated with Opioid Use Patterns Using Electronic Health Record Prescription Data
Jennings M.V. · Lee H. · Rocha D.B. · Bianchi S.B. · Coombes B.J. · Crist R.C. · Faucon A.B. · Hu Y. · Kember R.L. · Mallard T.T. · Niarchou M. · Poulsen M.N. · Straub P. · Urman R.D. · Walsh C.G. · PsycheMERGE Substance Use Disorder Workgroup · Davis L.K. · Smoller J.W. · Troiani V. · Sanchez-Roige
Complex Psychiatry (DOI:10.1159/000525313)

Accelerating Opioid Use Disorders Research by Integrating Multiple Data Modalities
Bianchi S.B. · Jeffery A.D. · Samuels D.C. · Schirle L. · Palmer A.A. · Sanchez-Roige S.
Complex Psychiatry (DOI:10.1159/000525079)

In the last few years phenomic and genomic tools have greatly impacted all areas of biological and medical research. What would you say has been the greatest impact in the field of psychiatry? And/or, what do you envision for the field of Psychiatry now that these techniques are available and being optimized?
Decades of family and twin studies have indisputably established that psychiatric disorders have a familial and heritable component. The disappointing reality is that, unlike Mendelian disorders, mental illnesses are extremely complex, reflecting the interplay of hundreds to thousands of genetic loci and environmental factors conferring risk. With the advent of genome-wide association studies, we have seen new and fascinating insights into the complex etiology of mental illness. We have learned that psychiatric disorders are extremely polygenic (omnigenic, even), including the full spectrum of common DNA variation. We have identified specific genetic loci for virtually all major psychiatric disorders. The biggest revelation has been the finding that these risk loci are shared across psychiatric and even somatic disorders. Such findings demonstrate that our clinical nosology does not align with the underlying biology (as it is often said, “the genes have not read the DSM”) and suggest new ways to define and potentially treat mental disorders. These discoveries have been propelled by several key advances. Perhaps the most important one was the development of “team science” through the formation of large consortia efforts. But we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

To fully realize the potential of pharmacogenetics and precision medicine, we will need to address several major gaps. Although we have successfully mapped hundreds of loci associated with complex disorders, we need new tools, longitudinal and diverse datasets to shed new light on disease psychopathology. The advent of single-cell transcriptomics and other -omics, the availability of new tools for functional and imaging genomics, and the development of methods that account for how genetic variants (common, and rare) interact with environmental factors, will provide new windows into the biology of psychiatric disorders possibly sooner than we realize.

You are an active Member of the Editorial Board of Complex Psychiatry. What made you consider this role? Does it affect your other professional roles? How?
In March 2020, Drs. Gelernter and Polimanti (editors-in-chief) invited me to support and continue to grow Complex Psychiatry. I joined the board, in a heartbeat, for two reasons. First, dissemination of results is paramount to the scientific community. Serving on editorial boards that align with my research is my responsibility as a scientist. Second, the editors and the members of the editorial board are leaders in the field. Therefore, being exposed to this vibrant community inspires me to make better science! As a member of the editorial board, I help assist with the vision and content of the journal. I am exceedingly grateful to be able to showcase my work in this pioneering journal.

If you had to endorse Complex Psychiatry to a colleague in only a couple of sentences, what would you highly recommend?
With a stellar editorial board committed to rapid communication, Complex Psychiatry showcases the hard, multi-disciplinary work of dedicated scientists and trainees with the common goal of cracking the code of psychiatric disorders.

Meet Our Co-Editor-in-Chief Craig Smith

We are happy to introduce and welcome Professor Craig Smith of Monash University as the new co-Editor in Chief of Sexual Development , to work alongside Professor Anu Bashamboo and Professor Manfred Schartl. The journal will benefit from Craig`s leading expertise and research interests in Evo-Devo and the evolution of sex-determining mechanisms, including embryonic gonadal sex differentiation, using the chicken embryo to study morphogenesis of the ovary, testis and Müllerian ducts.

Could you please tell us about yourself?
I am a developmental biologist with a long-standing interest in vertebrate sex determination and gonadal sex differentiation. I am based at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in a teaching and research position. I head the Comparative Development and Evo-Devo group in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash Biomedical Discovery Institute. My primary animal model is the avian embryo. We use this model to shed light on the genetic and celluar mechanisms underpinning gonadal sex differentiation. The chicken is a useful model for human sex development, and is also of great interest in its own right, as the poultry industry seeks methods of modulating sex. (All female are required by the egg industry, for example). Our group has provided much of our current knowledge on the molecular genetic regulation of gonad development in the chicken embryo, including discovery of the master testis gene in birds, DMRT1. Most recently, our group has been exploring avian gonad development at the single cell level. An over-arching interest in my lab is the evo-devo of gonadal sex determination, and how the genetic regulation of sexual differentiation has evolved among animals.

How did you become interested in your field?
I have always had a great love of zoology. After I finished my science degree, I worked as a research assistant in various labs for a few years, mainly human-focused endocrinology labs. I always wanted to get back into zoology. One day I read about the intriguing phenomenon of temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) in reptiles. My Honours mentor, Professor Jean Joss at Macquarie University in Sydney, had done some work on that topic. So, I returned to her lab to undertake a PhD on TSD in alligator and crocodile embryos. We did a lot of work on the cell biology and endocrinology of crocodilian gonadal development and developed an hypothesis around how TSD might operate. It was the early 1990’s. Very little was known at all about the genetics of vertebrate gonadal development at the time, and indeed the mammalian SRY gene had only just been identified. The field was ripe for being opened by the great advances in molecular genetics that were being made. After completing my PhD, I joined Professor Andrew Sinclair’s lab as a postdoc at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, at the Royal Children’s Hosptial in Melbourne. Andrew had established the chicken embryo as a very nice model for gonadal development. I eventually became head of my own group there, spending some 20 years detailing gonadal sex differentiation in the chicken model. I shifted to Monash University in 2015, and I still use the avian model today, nowadays working not only on chicken, but also quail, emu and other avian systems. So, I have been studying vertebrate sex determination since my PhD years.

What advice would you give to researchers writing their first article?
If you are writing your first article – and it’s a primary research paper – start by asking the right question. This is very important, as you need to frame a good question and then be able to the address it with the correct experimental approaches. Also, aim for novelty. Look for where there are gaps in our current understanding of a topic. Thoroughly read the literature. Invite a collaborator onto the study, where their contribution will be of value to the work. This is also an important networking strategy and collaborations are a win-win for all participants. As for writing the paper, some people write them backwards, starting with results. I write them the way they are read, beginning with the introduction, and this puts me in the mindset for laying out the results and covering the discussion in the context of the original question. Send your manuscript to an expert in the field, get feedback from colleagues. Lastly, write in precise, pithy, scientific language. No one likes to read a long, rambling paper where ideas are cloudy! Some researchers can do this effortlessly, for others, it takes practice. People reading your paper will thank for you for it.
I will always remember the thrill of seeing my first paper published in 1992. Once you start publishing papers, the process snowballs and you have become a scientist!

Visit the journal home page Sexual Development

Flip to OA? An interview with Professor Hendrik Scholl, Editor-in-Chief of Ophthalmic Research

As part of our community event for International Open Access Week, we interviewed Editor-in-Chief Professor Hendrik Scholl, who explains why it was the right move to flip our journal Ophthalmic Research from the subscription model to OA. Professor Scholl discusses the motivating factors and measures of success behind this decision and provides practical advice for fellow Editors-in-Chief facing the decision of whether to flip their journals.

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