Frances Javier, MD, a second-year resident in the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Adult/Child Psychiatry training program, has been selected to participate in the 2020 American Psychiatric Association (APA) Research Colloquium.
The program will be held during the APA Annual Meeting April 25 and 26 in Philadelphia. Javier will receive a stipend for her participation in the Molecular, Translational, and Neuroscience Research track of the colloquium.
Her project examines the effect of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on brain synaptic vesicle density in treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) using a novel PET ligand. Despite promising results in the literature that show ECT resulting in symptom reduction in patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, ECT is not FDA approved for this indication and its neurobiological basis is poorly understood.
Her research mentors are Yale Department of Psychiatry faculty Rajiv Radhakrishnan, MD, PhD; Deepak Cyril D’Souza, MD; Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD; and Robert Ostroff, MD.