Célia Fourrier

South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute | SAHMRI · Hopwood Centre for Neurobiology

Background Autophagy is a cellular process that cleanses cells and is particularly important during ageing. Autophagy has been extensively studied in vitro and in animal models and is known to be sensitive to nutrition. However, human data are limited because autophagic flux (autophagic degradative activity) has been challenging to measure in human...

In the last few decades, mounting evidence has highlighted that microglia have crucial roles in both health and disease. This has led to a growing interest in studying human microglia in disease-relevant models. However, current models present limitations that can make them unsuitable for moderate throughput studies in human cohorts. Primary human...

Background Autophagy is a cellular process that cleanses cells and is particularly important during ageing. Autophagy has been extensively studied in vitro and in animal models and is known to be sensitive to nutrition. However, human data are limited because autophagic flux (autophagic degradative activity) has been challenging to measure in human...

Lysosomal network abnormalities are an increasingly recognised feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which appear early and are progressive in nature. Sandhoff disease and Tay-Sachs disease (neurological lysosomal storage diseases caused by mutations in genes that code for critical subunits of β-hexosaminidase) result in accumulation of amyloid-β (A...

The gut microbiome-brain axis exerts considerable influence on the development and regulation of the central nervous system. Numerous pathways have been identified by which the gut microbiome communicates with the brain, falling largely into the two broad categories of neuronal innervation and immune-mediated mechanisms. We describe an additional r...

Given the role of low-grade inflammation in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD), anti-inflammatory strategies may improve treatment outcomes in some patients. However, it is controversial whether they can be used as adjunctive treatments and whether pre-treatment levels of inflammation can predict treatment outcomes. This study w...

Age‐related diseases represent some of largest unmet clinical needs of our time. While treatment of specific disease‐related signs has had some success (for example the effect of statin drugs on slowing progression of atherosclerosis), slowing biological ageing itself represents a target that could significantly increase health‐span and reduce the...

The rapidly growing field of immunopsychiatry combines expertise and insights from immunology, psychiatry and neuroscience to understand the role of inflammation and other immune processes in causing and treating mental illness. This represents a major shift in mental health science, traditionally focused on psychological and neuronal mechanisms of...

Cognitive and emotional remediation training for depression (CERT-D): a randomised controlled trial to improve cognitive, emotional and functional outcomes in depression The aim of the current study was to evaluate an experimental treatment designed to improve psychosocial function in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) by reinforcing cog...

Autophagy is a catabolic process that collects and degrades damaged or unwanted cellular materials such as protein aggregates. Defective brain autophagy has been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. Autophagy is regulated by the protein kinase mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin). Although already demonstrated in vitro, it remains cont...

Measurement of autophagic flux in vivo is critical to understand how autophagy can be used to combat disease. Neurodegenerative diseases have a special relationship with autophagy, which makes measurement of autophagy in the brain a significant research priority. Currently, measurement of autophagic flux is possible through use of transgenic constr...

Background Partial response to antidepressant medication, as well as relapse and treatment resistance are common in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Therefore, for most patients with MDD there will be a need to consider changing antidepressant medication at some stage during the course of the illness. The PREDDICT study investigates the efficacy of...

Autophagic flux is a critical cellular process that is vastly under-appreciated in terms of its importance to human health. Preclinical studies have demonstrated that reductions in autophagic flux cause cancer and exacerbate chronic diseases, including heart disease and the pathological hallmarks of dementia. Autophagic flux can be increased by tar...

Background A subset of patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have shown differences relative to healthy controls in blood inflammatory and immune markers. Meanwhile, MDD and comorbid obesity appear to present with distinct biological and symptom characteristics, categorised as “atypical” or “immunometabolic” depression, although the relevan...

Cognitive dysfunctions are current across psychiatric disorders and negatively impair patients’ quality of life and normal daily functioning and reduce clinical recovery. It is therefore important to understand the biological mechanisms underlying these cognitive impairments in order to develop new therapeutic strategies targeting these symptoms. P...

Metabolic syndrome represents a major risk factor for severe comorbidities such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes. It is also associated with an increased prevalence of emotional and cognitive alterations that in turn aggravate the disease and related outcomes. Identifying therapeutic strategies able to improve those alterations is therefore a...

Cognitive impairments reported across psychiatric conditions (ie, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and posttraumatic stress disorder) strongly impair the quality of life of patients and the recovery of those conditions. There is therefore a great need for consideration for cognitive dysfunction in the management of psychi...

Objective: To evaluate the extent to which cognitive measures in the recently developed THINC-Integrated tool (THINC-it) are associated with global and domain-specific psychosocial disability in patients with current and remitted Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Methods: Cross-sectional data (N= 127) were obtained from participants with current (n...

Although the high prevalence of anxiety in obesity increasingly emerges as significant risk factor for related severe health complications, the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms remain poorly understood. Considering that chronic inflammation is a key component of obesity and is well known to impact brain function and emotional behavior, we h...

Background: In patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), antidepressant response and remission rates are low, highlighting the need for new treatment approaches. Recently, the abundant literature linking inflammatory processes and depressive symptoms have led to the hypothesis that selecting treatment for MDD based on the patient's inflammato...

Background Neuroinflammatory processes are considered a double-edged sword, having both protective and detrimental effects in the brain. Microglia, the brain’s resident innate immune cells, are a key component of neuroinflammatory response. There is a growing interest in developing drugs to target microglia and control neuroinflammatory processes....

L’obésité est une maladie associée à des altérations métaboliques et inflammatoires et constitue un facteur de risque important de développer des comorbidités telles qu’un diabète de type 2. De plus, la prévalence de troubles de l’humeur et de la cognition est élevée chez les sujets obèses. Ces troubles neuropsychiatriques compliquent la prise en c...

Mounting evidence shows that the gut microbiota, an important player within the gut-brain communication axis, can affect metabolism, inflammation, brain function and behavior. Interestingly, gut microbiota composition is known to be altered in patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS), who also often display neuropsychiatric symptoms. The use of preb...

Obesity is a metabolic and inflammatory disorder that represents a major risk factor for development of comorbidities such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes. Obese patients also often experience mood and cognitive dysfunctions, which drastically worsen obesity. Reducing their development may therefore allow improving health and quality of life...

Introduction et but de l’étude La prévalence de l’obésité ne cesse d’augmenter depuis ces dernières décennies. Or, les conséquences physiopathologiques sont nombreuses et souvent graves, l’obésité représentant un facteur de risque accru pour le développement de maladies cardiovasculaires et métaboliques, mais également neuropsychiatriques (forte in...

La prévalence des troubles de l’humeur, tels que la dépression majeure, chez les patients obèses et/ou diabétiques atteint près de 30 %, c’est-à-dire le double de ce qui est observé dans la population générale. Ceci est problématique, car la dépression augmente le risque de développer des comorbidités telles que les troubles cardiovasculaires et al...

Le diabète de type 2 est associé à une prévalence élevée de développer une dépression. L’identification des mécanismes sous-tendant cette association est un enjeu de santé publique majeur. Des données récentes suggèrent que des processus inflammatoires seraient impliqués dans le développement de ces altérations émotionnelles. L’activité anti-inflam...

Understanding how malnutrition contributes to depression is building momentum. In the present study we unravel molecular and cellular mechanisms by which nutritional disturbances lead to impaired emotional behaviour in mice. Here we report that nutritional n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) deficiency induces a chronic stress state reflected by...

We identified for the first time a synaptic substrate (the cannabinoid 1 receptor) altered by omega-3 deficient diet, that leads to impairment of mood-related behavior frequently observed in Western diets. This work was published in Nature Neuroscience in 2011. Then we reported that nutritional omega-3 deficiency, like chronic social defeat stress...