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The IoPPN Immunopsychiatry Meetings are an exciting new forum for research and debate, set up with the aim of bringing together researchers and students from across the Institute who have an interest in the intersection of psychiatry and immunology.
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Title: Endogenous retroviral elements in the aetiology and pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental disorders
Speaker: Professor Urs Meyer, Professor of Pharmacology, Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich
Biography:
Professor Meyer earned his PhD in behavioral neurobiology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland, in 2007. He then spent post-doctoral fellowships at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, and at the Behavioral Neurobiology Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Between 2011 and 2014, he was a Group Leader and Lecturer at the Physiology and Behavior Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. In 2015, he was appointed as Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich – Vetsuisse, Switzerland. He is also a faculty member at the Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Professor Meyer’s main research interests are centered upon the question of how early-life environmental adversities such as prenatal infection, pubertal stress, and nutritional imbalances can influence brain development and shape the risk of long-term brain abnormalities. His research team combines behavioral and cognitive tests, immunological assays and neuroanatomical techniques in rodent models, including mouse models of gene-environment and environment-environment interactions relevant to multifactorial neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. His research also includes molecular investigations to examine the role of epigenetic processes in environmentally induced brain pathologies and uses pharmacological approaches with the aim to establish novel symptomatic and preventive treatments against chronic brain disorders with neurodevelopmental origins.