The epigenetics of early life adversity and trauma inheritance: an interview with Moshe Szyf

In this interview, Professor Moshe Szyf speaks with Storm Johnson, Commissioning Editor for Epigenomics, on his work to date in the field of social epigenetics. Szyf received his PhD from the Hebrew University and did his postdoctoral fellowship in genetics at Harvard Medical School, joined the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University in Montreal in 1989 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Academy of Health Sciences of Canada. He is the founding codirector of the Sackler Institute for Epigenetics and Psychobiology at McGill and is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Experience-Based Brain and Biological Development program. Szyf was the founder of the first pharma to develop epigenetic pharmacology, Methylgene Inc., and the journal Epigenetics. The Szyf lab proposed two decades ago that DNA methylation is a prime therapeutic target in cancer and other diseases and postulated and provided the first set of evidence that the social environment early in life can alter DNA methylation, launching the emerging field of social epigenetics.

245 Sleep and cortical thickness are influenced by surgical menopause

Introduction Early loss of 17β-estradiol (E2), as experienced by women with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO; removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes), is associated with increased prevalence of sleep disorders and greater Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk. In older adults, poor sleep heightens AD risk; hypoxia increases markers for incipient AD, including circulating Aβ, and is linked to prefrontal cortical thinning. Thus, we wondered: 1) if this at-risk population of middle-aged women with BSO had sleep hypoxia, measured by oxygen desaturation, and 2) whether this related to decreased prefrontal cortical thickness in women taking and not taking estradiol therapy (ET). Methods Sleep and percent oxygen desaturation (SPO2%) were measured via at-home polysomnography (TEMEC). Prefrontal cortical thickness was obtained from T1-weighted structural scans using the CIVET pipeline. We recruited middle-age women with BSO, some of whom were taking ET (BSO+ET; n=15), and some not (BSO; n=15). We compared their sleep and cortical thickness with that of age and education-matched premenopausal controls (AMC; n=18). Results Women with BSO (BSO, BSO+ET) had lower minimum SPO2% values than AMC, and thinner right medial orbitofrontal (rmOF) cortices. There was a trend for women with BSO to have lower average SPO2% than AMC. Analyses separating groups based on ET therapy status (BSO vs BSO+ET vs AMC) revealed only trending differences between groups, such that women with BSO tended to have lower minimum SPO2% and thinner rmOF cortices than AMC. Conclusion These preliminary results suggest early loss of E2 due to BSO may drive greater drops in SPO2% in middle-age women, and may be related to reduced prefrontal cortical thickness. This study is the first to show hypoxia in women with BSO. Support (if any) Ontario Graduate Scholarship Award (to LG), Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship (co-sponsored by Brain Canada Foundation; AARF-17-504715 to NJG), Alzheimer’s Society Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship (to AA), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Masters Award (to LG, AB, and RR), Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging (from the Posluns Family Foundation, CIHR, Ontario Brain Institute, and Alzheimer Society of Canada; WJP-150643 to GE)

Examining resource availability and usefulness in a National Health Service Research Interprofessional Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

Postdoctoral fellowships are costly: institutions incur substantial monetary costs, and fellows suffer the opportunity cost of delaying entry into their professional careers. Nevertheless, fellowship training is a beneficial academic investment; the right resources can attract high-quality candidates and maximize return on investment for all parties. This study examined the availability and perceived utility of training resources in a national, multisite interprofessional health services research fellowship program and examined differences in resource perception between alumni and directors as well as M.D. and Ph.D. alumni. One-hundred thirty-one alumni and 15 directors from a multisite interprofessional postdoctoral fellowship completed surveys regarding fellowship resources. Results from the fellowship sample as a whole revealed that mentoring and seminars were the most commonly available resources in fellowships and alumni from the same site often disagreed about resource availability. When we compared alumni and directors’ responses from the same site, we found they often disagreed about resource availability, with directors often being more likely to respond that the resource is available than the alumni. Finally, M.D. alumni reported availability of more resources and found resources to be more useful overall than Ph.D. alumni. Mentoring and seminars are important and commonly provided resources for trainees in fellowship programs; however, M.D.s and Ph.D.s vary in perceived usefulness of other resources, suggesting that one resource does not fit all. Given the gap, postdoctoral fellows may benefit from direct communication of available resources. Moreover, as Ph.D. fellows reported less resource availability and usefulness, attention should be given to meeting their unmet needs. Taken together, this will optimize their fellowship experience, thus better preparing them for their career and, ultimately, their impact on health care.

In the field: an interview with Katsufumi Sato

Katsufumi Sato is a Professor at The University of Tokyo, Japan, where he investigates the behaviour of top marine predators. He completed his undergraduate degree in Fisheries, and his Master's degree and PhD at Kyoto University, Japan. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Polar Research, Japan, Sato was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the same institute, before moving to the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2004. Sato was awarded a National Geographic Emerging Explorer grant in 2009 and promoted to Professor in 2014. Telling us about his research experiences around Japan and in Antarctica, Sato describes how his data logging devices have led to collaborations with scientists across the globe.