News & Views

Read the latest from Baszucki Group and its partners.

Gabriel Fries, MSc, PhD: A Novel Approach to a Devastating Psychiatric Outcome

For Dr. Gabriel Fries, psychiatry has always been more than a field of study—it is a deeply personal calling. His older brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when they were both very young, and watching his brother’s struggles left an indelible mark. “Just being his brother made clear to me the limitations of the treatments that exist,” Fries says. “It shaped my passion for research, which isn’t always an easy career, but it gave me a sense of purpose. It was a way to help, even indirectly.”

Fabiano Gomes, MD, MSc, PhD: Building a Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic for the Future

Dr. Fabiano Gomes has been interested in the link between physical and mental health since his early years of medical training. “I was struck by how many of my patients were gaining weight, developing diabetes, and facing vascular problems alongside their mental health challenges,” says Gomes. That concern led him to focus on insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome in people with bipolar disorder, beginning a line of research in 2005 that he carried through his postgraduate studies. “I wanted to understand how these medical comorbidities were influencing the course of illness—and why outcomes were so much worse for patients with metabolic issues.”

Jacek Kolacz, PhD: New Technology, New Hope for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

For Dr. Jacek Kolacz, mental health treatments are about addressing underlying causes, not just symptoms. His work focuses on patients who have lived through chronic threat, including those who have developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These patients often have complex disorders of both the brain and body, including the heart, gut, and even vocal muscles. To understand why, Kolacz realized he needed to go beyond talk therapy and study the body’s physiology–and that meant collecting more data.

Sean Nestor, MD, PhD: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Treatment-Resistant Depression

Dr. Sean Nestor has built his career on developing new ways to push research forward. As an MD-PhD candidate, he developed a novel method to rapidly and accurately segment brain anatomy from MRI scans. Now, a clinician investigator and interventional psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Research Institute in Ontario, Canada, he combines brain imaging and investigational neuromodulation techniques (specifically transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS) to improve outcomes for people living with difficult to treat depression. These techniques are effective but expensive, making them inaccessible to many patients.

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