Rose completed her Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) at the University of Sydney. She worked as a research assistant for 3 years with Prof Tim Karl at NeuRA, investigating gene-environment interactions in schizophrenia using genetic mouse models. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne with Prof Andrew Lawrence, investigating how glutamate and adenosine receptors contributed to methamphetamine addiction using mouse models. She continued her work using rodent models of addiction in her first postdoctoral position at Prof Bernard Balleine’s Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Sydney. Here she investigated if pharmacologically targeting the noradrenergic system could help prevent relapse in alcohol addiction. Rose brought her skills in drug addiction research to Western Sydney University, to examine drug-taking behaviour in animal models of schizophrenia with Prof Tim Karl, and has recently started investigating novel treatments for neurodegenerative disorders. Rose is supported by several grants (e.g. NHMRC project grant 2019, Rebecca Cooper Project Grant 2020, Dementia Australia Project Grant 2022) and collaborates with leading Australian researchers from Macquarie University, the University of Wollongong and NeuRA.

Schizophrenia in the face of inflammation – novel treatment strategies are needed.

The project will address an unmet need in schizophrenia treatment - to identify agents that can regulate and protect dopamine neurons from neuroinflammation-related damage which is evident in at least 30% of patients.

We will use lipo-polysaccharide (LPS) to model neuroinflammation-induced midbrain dopaminergic cell dysfunction in male and female mice. LPS is a bacterial endotoxin that induces a robust immune response in the brain and also alters schizophrenia-relevant behaviours and the response to dexamphetamine (DEX)-induced locomotion, mimicking what is found early in schizophrenia.

We expect that chronic LPS will worsen schizophrenia-relevant behaviours and molecular signatures and that this can be rescued by administration of glutamatergic agents. Thus, the project will evaluate whether chronic administration of these agents during inflammation will have therapeutic-like effects on brain and/or behaviour. The mouse model work will be accompanied by postmortem human brain tissue work carried out by our collaborators at other institutes.

Our students will learn to administer LPS and therapeutic compounds to mice, conduct behavioural analyses as well as molecular analyses e.g. inflammatory markers in blood and brain regions, and analyse all behavioural and molecular data.

Novel treatments for drug addiction including cannabidiol (CBD) and modulation of the gut microbiome

Recent preclinical research suggests that cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive component of the cannabis plant, can limit release-like behaviour in rodent models of drug-taking for cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids and alcohol. Our recent research shows that CBD can affect the gut microbiome and also affect reward-like behaviour for cocaine in mice, suggesting CBD may act via the gut-brain axis to mediate cocaine reward. Our current projects are investigating mechanisms of CBD using analysis of gut metabolites as well as analysis of protein levels in brain regions relevant to drug use. We are also examining how drugs of abuse impact on the gut microbiome and on gut metabolites, both during drug use and after an extended washout, as well as how depletion of the gut microbiome e.g. with antibiotic treatment affects drug-taking behaviour.  Together, this will greatly improve our understanding of the role of gut health in drug use disorders, and assess the potential of the gut microbiome as a treatment target for drug use disorders.