Exploring data from ENROLL-HD - an international observational study in Huntington’s disease

Research Opportunity: Masters by Research, Honours students, Master of Biomedical Science
Department: Psychiatry
Location: Royal Melbourne Hospital

Primary Supervisor	Email	Number	Webpage
Dr Anita Goh	goha@unimelb.edu.au		Personal web page

Co-supervisor	Email	Number	Webpage
Professor Dennis Velakoulis	dennisv@unimelb.edu.au		Personal web page
Dr Samantha Loi	samantha.loi@unimelb.edu.au

Summary Enroll-HD is a worldwide observational study for Huntington’s disease families, which monitors how the disease appears and changes over time in different people, and is open to people who either have HD or are at-risk. There are more than 23,000 participants that have been enrolled into Enroll-HD and over 1 million aliquots of DNA, lymphoblastoid cell lines and PBMCs that are available for research. This project involves data mining of the latest periodic dataset release.

Project Details

Enroll-HD is a worldwide observational study for Huntington’s disease families. It monitors how the disease appears and changes over time in different people, and is open to people who either have HD or are at-risk. There are more than 23,000 participants that have been enrolled into Enroll-HD and over 1 million aliquots of DNA, lymphoblastoid cell lines and PBMCs that are available for research. This project involves data mining of the latest periodic dataset release—a set of de-identified records prepared for research that includes clinical, family history and genotyping data. This longitudinal dataset includes information from almost 10,000 people.

Opportunities:

* The opportunity to research what the student is interested in, as the dataset includes longitudinal medical information and results from tests of cognition, memory, physical ability and quality of life from individuals with the HD gene, those at risk, gene negative individuals, family controls, and community controls. The data is a valuable resource to address a wide variety of research questions in Huntington’s disease, including psychiatric, cognitive, psychological, and lifestyle questions. Discussion with supervisors will guide topic for the student.

* The project offers students an opportunity to develop research skills in a comprehensive international dataset, as well as develop skills in literature reviewing, data analysis, and epidemiological study skills

* Internationally renowned study and research team with international recognition.

* Dataset is already complete and accessible (thesis easily achievable in time frame)

* Publication of results in a peer-reviewed journal.

About us:

RESEARCH AT THE NEUROPSYCHIATRY UNITThe unit forms a clinical arm of the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, a joint research unit of the University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health/North-Western Mental Health. A number of our clinicians have strong research backgrounds in cognition, imaging, and clinical research. While providing high-quality assessments for our patients, we also foster and generate high-quality research in psychiatry and neuropsychiatry with the aim of improving our understanding of the disorders we treat, and to aid in the generation of new treatments. Our research involves characterising brain-behaviour relationships in a range of neuropsychiatric, neurodegenerative and neurometabolic disorders, and we also work with research groups locally and internationally in characterising these illnesses and in trialling novel treatments for brain disorders.

Faculty Research Themes

Neuroscience

School Research Themes

Neuroscience & Psychiatry

Research Opportunities

Masters by Research, Honours students, Master of Biomedical Science
Students who are interested in joining this project will need to consider their elegibility as well as other requirements before contacting the supervisor of this research

Graduate Research application

Honours application

Key Contact

For further information about this research, please contact a supervisor.

Department

Psychiatry

Research Node

Royal Melbourne Hospital

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