The symposium “Biomarkers in Psychiatry and Gynecology: From Discovery to Diagnosis”, organized by IMPACT and the Universidad de los Andes, was held on December 2 and 3.
The activity focused on the presentation of national and international research on biomarkers in mental health and women’s diseases, which seek to optimize diagnoses to make them more accurate and personalized, facilitating the detection of diseases and allowing more effective treatments.
Lara Monteiro, IMPACT researcher at the Universidad de los Andes and part of the Scientific Organizing Committee, highlighted the activity as a great experience: “We had luxury guests from both national and international areas and a great participation from the Universidad de los Andes, especially from the IMPACT Center and the Center for Biomedical Research and Innovation (CiiB),” she said.
GLOBAL ADVANCES IN THE SEARCH FOR BIOMARKERS
One of the international guests was the prominent psychiatrist Gustavo Turecki, who is director of the McGill Suicide Studies Group (Canada), and chief psychiatrist of the University Institute of Mental Health of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. Considered one of the most relevant researchers in mental health and suicide, Turecki was in charge of the opening talk of the symposium, addressing his research on mood disorders and suicidal behavior.
Asked about the relevance of biomarker research, he said: “Today in clinical practice we never know who is going to respond to a treatment, and it is very common for patients to arrive with a depressive condition and we need a long time to adjust the intervention in order to see which drug works. That leads to a lot of money being spent and also the patient is not well. Sometimes it takes two or three years to find out which medication really works. It would be great to have some kind of help that could shorten that period”.
On the other hand, the researcher from the University of the Republic of Uruguay, Homero Rubbo, discussed the advances in the study of lipid biomarkers. “Today they have been used more in neuroinflammatory processes and in neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis, but in mental health it would be very interesting for major depression and perhaps for some bipolar disorders,” he explained.
Regarding the area of gynecology and obstetrics, the academic and outstanding researcher of the Institute of Histology and Embryology of Mendoza, Marcela Michaut, presented the advances in the search for biomarkers to detect infertility in patients with endometriosis. “Our studies begin with oocytes. Because although much is known today, they are still considered a black box. We particularly study the cortical granules and propose them as a biomarker of cytoplasmic maturation and an indicator of oocyte quality,” she said.
