Body and Brain: co-occurrence of cardiometabolic and mental diseases

Alexander Häge (MD) is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, senior physician, and head of the research group Paediatric Psychopharmacology at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. He has conducted several studies as principal investigator and is responsible as workpackage leader in EU-granted projects. His research work focuses on clinical research investigating the efficacy and safety of new pharmacological interventions in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, of pharmacological and psychotherapeutic approaches and the issue of treatment adherence. In 2019 his research group has been awarded with the AGNP-price of the German Committee of Neuropsychopharmacology and Pharmacopsychiatry. Alexander Häge is member of the European Network for Hyperkinetic Disorders (EUNETHYDIS).

Barbara Franke holds the Chair of Molecular Psychiatry at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She is the current director of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour that unites neuroscience research across the Nijmegen campus. Based at the Human Genetics and Psychiatry departments of the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc), she also heads the Division of Genome Research and the Research Theme Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Barbara is a molecular biologist and geneticist. She studies the biological contribution to neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders, especially ADHD and its comorbidities. Beyond gene-finding, she uses complementary approaches (bioinformatics, cell-based and small animal models, neuroimaging genetics) to map biological pathways from gene to behaviour and disease. It is her goal to make biological information useful for improving the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has published over 500 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is one of the top-experts on ADHD according to Expertscape.

Barbara holds honorary professorships at Goethe University in Frankfurt and at Aarhus University. She is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, and of Academia Europaea.

Barbara is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG) as well as the co-lead of the ADHD working groups of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and the ENIGMA brain imaging consortium. She founded and leads the International Multicentre persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT) and the ECNP Network ‘ADHD across the Lifespan’.

Carmen Schiweck is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy of the Goethe Frankfurt, led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Reif. She studied Psychology and Neuroscience in Paris and Maastricht, pursued a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the KU Leuven in Belgium and has a certificate of continuous education in Immunology obtained at Cambridge University. As member of the Neurometabolic Circuitry Group, her interests lie in the interaction of the immune system, metabolic and mental health. In particularly she is interested in immunomodulatory techniques both in healthy people and in those affected by mental disorders, assessing insulin resistance, inflammatory components (both ex vivo and in vitro) and association of inflammatory profiles with specific symptoms. Currently, she investigates vagus nerve stimulation and dietary interventions in depression and ADHD. She has currently 24 peer reviewed publications with an h-index of 10, contributed to several book chapters and has been enjoying all ECNP congresses since 2018. She is looking forward to be a part of the ECNP family.

Fernando Fernandez-Aranda, Full Professor (School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Barcelona, Spain), Specialist in Clinical Psychology, has been the Director of the Eating Disorders (ED) Unit at the Clinical Psychology Department (University Hospital Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain), current Scientific Director of Research Institute IDIBELL, Vicedirector of CIBERobn (Excellence Spanish Research Network for Obesity and Nutrition), co-Head of Research Group CIBERobn and co-Head of Group Psychoneurobiology of Eating and Addictive Behaviours (IDIBELL). He is former president of the Eating Disorders Research Society (EDRS) and current co-Chair of the ED Section of the World Psychiatric Association. He obtained his PhD in Psychology in 1996 at the University of Hamburg (Germany). His previous appointments were as a Clinical Psychologist at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Hamburg (1994-1995), long-term predoctoral Research Fellowship in Hannover, Germany (1992-1993) and Consultant Psychologist at the Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Bellvitge in Barcelona (1996-03). He gave more than 400 invited lectures in International or National professional Psychology, Psychiatry, Nutrition/Endocrinology Conferences. Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders and Past-Editor in Chief of European Eating Disorders Review (2011-2022). Awarded with the Meehan Hartley Award for Public Service and/or Advocacy-2004, leadership Research Award-2015, and Hilde Bruch Lecture Award-2017 (University of Tübingen, Germany). He received several additional awards on development and innovation (Best European Video game for health-2011; Best Spanish Research Ideas-Diario Medico 2011). He has been PI in International/ EU Grants (11) and in National Grants (22). He has published more than 500 English peer-reviewed manuscripts in international journals. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2968-9898

Giuseppe Fanelli is a medical doctor and psychiatrist. He graduated from the University of Bari (Bari, Italy), defending a thesis on the impact of pathway-specific Polygenic Risk Scores (PRSs) for schizophrenia on cognition and brain activity in healthy humans. After starting his residency in Psychiatry at the University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy), he worked both in inpatient and outpatient clinical settings, with a particular focus on affective and psychotic disorders. He also continued to work in the field of psychiatric genomics and neuropsychobiology with Prof. Alessandro Serretti and Dr Chiara Fabbri, applying PRS approaches to the study of antidepressant response and suicidal behaviours. Since November 2019, he has joined Prof. Barbara Franke & Dr Janita Bralten's lab at the Radboud University Medical Center (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour - Nijmegen, The Netherlands) first as a visiting researcher and then as a PhD student. He is currently involved in the Horizon 2020 European project entitled "Prevention and Remediation of Insulin Multimorbidity in Europe" (PRIME), investigating the genetic factors underlying the high observed comorbidity between insulin-related somatic diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Jan Buitelaar is a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry at the Radboud University Medical Centre and at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He is also affiliated with Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre in Nijmegen. He has a strong clinical and research interest in neuropsychiatric disorders as autism and ADHD, and is involved in pharmacological, cognitive, clinical, genetic, and neuroimaging studies in these disorders. His current active research is focused on translational studies aiming to identify new molecular targets for autism and ADHD through matching preclinical models to human imaging genetics studies. His research has been supported by numerous grants from the European Union and from the Dutch Medical Research Council. He has published more than 1000 peer-reviewed scientific papers with more than 50,000 citations and is among the top 1% of most often cited researchers worldwide. He has been appointed a knight in the order of the Dutch Lion.

Janita Bralten is an assistant professor at the department of Human Genetics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research line focusses on the genetics of psychiatric disorders, like Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Comorbidity is highly frequent among psychiatric disorders and also extends to somatic disorders (e.g. obesity). As it is well known that these disorders are (highly) heritable, studying their genetics can be an important tool to have a significant impact, as it allows us to learn more about their underlying biological mechanisms. However, previous research has shown that the gold standard case-control comparisons are suboptimal with heterogeneous samples like the ones we have in psychiatry. Therefore, in the group of Janita, they step away from comparing individuals with and without a psychiatric disorder, but try to capture the complete spectrum of variability. Building on evidence that disorders are the extremes of traits/symptoms present across the whole population, Janita's group studies the genetics of symptom-based or trait-based measures of relevance to disease in the population, including other health measures like somatic features, and using state-of-the-art statistics.

Jordi Salas-Salvadó is Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Human Nutrition Unit of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and ICREA Academy Investigator by Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies, holding teaching and research positions since 1988. Currently, he is the Clinical Head of the Nutrition Unit at the Internal Medicine of the University Hospital Sant Joan of Reus; Vice-Director of the Pere i Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) and Principal Investigator of the CIBER Pathophysiology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn) of the Carlos III Health Institute and coordinator of its Nutrition Program. He is also the Director of the Catalan Center of Nutrition of the Institute of Catalan Studies (CCNIEC), Director of the INC-World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination Chair of the Rovira I Virgili University and is a Member of the Expert Group of Public Health Agency of Catalonia of the Generalitat de Catalunya. At the international level, he is the Chairman of the World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination at the International Nut and Dried Fruit Foundation (INC); Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC); Member of the Panel of Experts of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DSNG) of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and Member of the Scientific Committee of the Danone International Institute. He has been declared by Clarivate Analytics as "Highly Cited Researcher" in the years 2018 and 2019 as one of the most cited researchers in the world. He has published more than 600 scientific articles, adding more than 20,000 citations and has published 14 books. Dr. Salas' research has focused on clinical trials in humans to evaluate the effect of food, dietary compounds and dietary patterns on obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases. Since 2005, he is one of the leaders of the PREDIMED Study (n=7447 participants), and is currently Coordinator and Chairman of the Steering Committee of the PREDIMED-Plus study (n=6874 participants), two large clinical trials for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and mortality. PREDIMED-Plus is a multi-collaborative project involving 30 research groups, and had received National, European & USA grants. With all these projects and collaborations, they have also developed skills in precision medicine using different OMIC´s methodologies, especially metabolomics, which they are now implementing in epidemiologic and clinical studies.

Silke Matura (Ph.D.) is a psychologist, senior clinical scientist and head of the Research group mHealth and lifestyle modifications at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Her current research focuses on the impact of long-term habits (e.g. dietary habits, physical activity) on psychological well-being and the brain. Her research involves Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and a large array of neuroimaging methods (spectroscopic magnetic resonance imaging, quantitative MRI, fMRI, DTI) to study the impact of lifestyle factors on brain metabolism, structure and function. She is currently leading work packages in two EU granted projects, investigating insulin multimorbidities and the effect of lifestyle factors on impulsivity and compulsivity.

Theresa Wimberley is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Centre for Register-based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark. Her research area is psychiatric epidemiology studying causes and consequences of psychiatric disorders, utilizing the population-based Danish registers by linking hospital, pharmacy, socioeconomic as well as genetic data from iPSYCH. She did a PhD within the field of treatment-resistant schizophrenia (CRESTAR EU collaboration) and her postdoctoral research focused on childhood disorders ADHD and autism. Currently, she works on projects in PRIME (European Prevention and Remediation of Insulin Multimorbidity in Europe) under supervision by Prof. Søren Dalsgaard, exploring the comorbidity between type 2 diabetes and brain-related disorders from an epidemiological perspective.

Veerle van Gils is a PhD researcher at the Alzheimer Center Limburg, Maastricht University. She obtained her research master’s degree in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, with a specialisation in Neuropsychology. Within her PhD, she focuses on research into vascular contributions to Alzheimer’s Disease pathophysiology and its associated cognitive decline. To examine this, she pools, harmonises, and analyses data of several memory clinic and aging cohorts in Europe. As part of the PRIME (Prevention and Remediation of Insulin Multimorbidity in Europe) project, she explores the relationships between insulin-related markers (such as diabetes), Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers and its related cognitive decline.