Research in the Vernon lab is focused on two themes:

1) Maps to mechanisms: To understand how alterations in brain structure and function observed in patients with mental health disorders align with appropriate experimental models. This is necessary to advance knowledge of causative biological pathways and mechanisms and facilitate discovery of novel therapeutics.

2) hiPSC models and neurodevelopment: Using microglia and neurons differentiated from hiPSC, we seek to understand how genetic risk for neurodevelopmental disorders impacts on human neurodevelopment “in a dish”.

I am Training co-ordinator for the UKRI MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Together with Dr Laura Andreae, we run the MRC PhD program. I co-lead a distance-learning module entitled "Neurodevelopmental Disorders from Bench to Bedside".

Please see my Research Staff Profile for more detail.

Key Publications:

• Onwordi et al., 2020. Synaptic density marker SV2A is reduced in schizophrenia patients and unaffected by antipsychotics in rats. Nature Communications.
• Warre-Cornish K, Perfect L, Nagy R, Duarte RRR, Reid MJ, Raval P, Mueller A, Evans AL, Couch A, Ghevaert C, McAlonan G, Loth E, Murphy D, Powell TR, Vernon AC, Srivastava DP, Price J. 2020 Interferon-γ signaling in human iPSC-derived neurons recapitulates neurodevelopmental disorder phenotypes. Science Advances. 
• Mueller FS, Scarborough J, Schalbetter SM, Richetto J, Kim E, Couch A, Yee Y, Lerch JP, Vernon AC, Weber-Stadlbauer U, Meyer U. 2021, Behavioral, neuroanatomical, and molecular correlates of resilience and susceptibility to maternal immune activation.  Molecular Psychiatry. 
• Klein L, Van Steenwinckel J, Fleiss B, Scheuer T, Bührer C, Faivre V, Lemoine S, Blugeon C, Schwendimann L, Csaba Z, Bokobza C, Vousden DA, Lerch JP, Vernon AC, Gressens P, Schmitz T. A unique cerebellar pattern of microglia activation in a mouse model of encephalopathy of prematurity. 2022 Glia. 
• Bhat A, Irizar H, Couch ACM, Raval P, Duarte RRR, Dutan Polit L, Hanger B, Powell T, Deans PJM, Shum C, Nagy R, McAlonan G, Iyegbe CO, Price J, Bramon E, Bhattacharyya S, Vernon AC, Srivastava DP. Attenuated transcriptional response to pro-inflammatory cytokines in schizophrenia hiPSC-derived neural progenitor cells. 2022 Brain Behaviour and Immunity.105:82-97. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2022.06.010.

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Key Collaborators:

• Dr Deepak Srivastava, King's College London
• Professor Jason Lerch, University of Oxford
• Professor Gerd Kempermann, Technische Universität Dresden
• Professor Urs Meyer, University of Zurich