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  2. Raquel Romay-Tallon

Raquel Romay-Tallon PhD

Raquel Romay-Tallon
Designation
  • Research Scholar
Contact Information
  • rromay [at] uic.edu
  • (312) 355-2511
  • College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry
    University of Illinois at Chicago

  • School of Public Health / Psychiatric Institute (SPHPI)
    1601 W. Taylor St.
    SPHPI MC 912
    Chicago IL 60612
  • Room #:252/256
  • -----------------------------------------------
  • Molecular Biology Research Building (MBRB)
    900 S. Ashland
    (entrance to building is on Marshfield side of street)
    Chicago IL 60607
  • Room #:4368

Dr. Romay-Tallon has started her PhD in 2005, after finishing her degree in Biology, with Dr Caruncho at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in the Department of Cell Biology. During her PhD, she has studied the neurobiology of an animal model for psychiatric disorders, the heterozygous reeler mice (HRM). This animal model presents a downregulation in the expression of the protein reelin, which is known to be involved in synaptogenesis, promote neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity. Reelin is also downregulated in cortical areas (prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, cingulated cortex) in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression. In September 2007, she has obtained her Advanced Studies Degree with a project based in the study of markers of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus of HRM. During this time, she was member of Biopharma group at the University of Santiago de Compostela led by Dr Loza and Dr Caruncho.
In 2008, she has participated in a collaboration with Dr Kalynchuk from the University of Saskatchewan (Canada). Dr Kalynchuk has developed a very well validated animal model for depression based in the chronic administration of corticosterone (CORT) to rodents. They have found that under that stressful event the levels of expression of reelin are downregulated. The working hypothesis was to analyze the neurobiology and also the behaviour of the HRM when they are subjected to the administration of high dosage of corticosterone for 21 days. As part of that collaboration Dr. Romay-Tallon has had the opportunity to work directly in contact with Dr Lussier, at that time PhD student in the Dr Kalynchuk´s laboratory. As part of that collaboration Dr. Romay-Tallon has done a short stay at the University of Saskatchewan (1.5 months) financed by the project (PGIDIT06PXIB200166PR).

In 2009, Dr. Romay-Tallon was contracted as a researcher to collaborate in a project from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Spanish Government “Correlation of neural plasticity alterations in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder” (SAF2007-62766). During this time, she was collaborating with Dr Rivera-Baltanás (Researcher at the University Hospital of Vigo) to develop appropriate techniques to the analysis of protein clustering in lymphocytes of patients with mental disorders, such as schizophrenia.
In 2011, Dr. Romay-Tallon participated in a small collaboration with Dr Rodríguez-Moldes Rey at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in a project focused in the study of the effect of age in adult reeler mice. As part of that collaboration she was directly involved in the training of Dr Sánchez Farias, Dr Rodríguez-Moldes´ Phd student at that time. As a result, they have presented a communication poster in the IV Conference of Spanish Society of Neuroscience.

Dr. Romay-Tallon has obtained her PhD with the qualification of Cum Laude in February 2013 and in January 2015 she joined as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Caruncho´s, and Dr Kalynchuk´s laboratory. The results of her dissertation and collaborations and current postdoctoral position are published 8 peer-reviewed papers in international journal, and 3 more in preparation. Currently, she is involved in two major different projects: Neural Health Project (Supervised by Dr Caruncho, Dr Maltman and Dr Leis). The goal of those projects is evaluating alterations in biomarkers before and after different antidepressant treatments.

Currently Dr. Romay-Tallon has joined Dr Pinna’s laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago to continue her studies in mental health and more particularly psychiatric disorders from a translational perspective.