Rate My Professor Chantel Fitzsimmons

Dr. Fitzsimmons returned to the University of Newcastle in 2022 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Complex Disease Neurobiology and Precision Medicine under Conjoint Professor Murray Cairns. Her current research aims to enhance understanding of complex neuropsychiatric disorder pathogenesis, employing patient-derived cerebral organoids and molecular/phenotypic assays to test the pharmagenic enrichment strategy (PES) for genetically informed precision medicine treatments in schizophrenia, with high potential for clinical translation. Her research specializations include epigenetics, liposomes, molecular virology, oncopharmacology, pharmacogenomics, psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia, and microRNA. She has received the Australian Postgraduate Award (2007), Alzheimer’s Association 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease travel fellowship, and Philip Emlyn Thomas Honours Scholarship in Environmental Studies (2005). Key publications include "Extension of mRNA poly(A) tails and 3′UTRs during neuronal differentiation exhibits variable association with post-transcriptional dynamics" (Nucleic Acids Research, 2023), "The MIR137 VNTR rs58335419 Is Associated With Cognitive Impairment in Schizophrenia and Altered Cortical Morphology" (Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2021), "Depolarization-Associated CircRNA Regulate Neural Gene Expression and in Some Cases May Function as Templates for Translation" (Cells, 2020), "Circular RNA biogenesis is decreased in postmortem cortical gray matter in schizophrenia and may alter the bioavailability of associated miRNA" (Neuropsychopharmacology, 2019), and "The Medical Genome Reference Bank contains whole genome and phenotype data of 2570 healthy elderly" (Nature Communications, 2020).