For the fourth year, the Mach-Gaensslen Foundation of Canada is supporting the Dr. Francis Wayne Quan Memorial Prize for the best papers published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience (JPN) over the year. The prize-winning papers for 2025 were announced February 19, 2025. This year, two papers shared the prize:
Marques DF, Spindola LM, Narang A, Vaziri N, Stavrum AK, Jayaram M, Thomas N, Pantelis C, Le Hellard S, Hemberger M, Dean W, Greenway SC, Bousman C.
Differential DNA methylation and gene expression in stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes from patients with and without a history of clozapine-induced myocarditis.
J Psychiatry Neurosci 2025;50:E323–33 (https://doi.org/10.1139/jpn-25-0017)
This paper found a possible answer to a puzzling problem in the treatment of schizophrenia — a serious side effect of the antipsychotic drug clozapine. The side effect is myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. Researchers took stem cells from people with schizophrenia, both those who had developed myocarditis while taking clozapine and those who had not. The cells were developed into heart cells in the lab and exposed to clozapine. Genetic analysis showed several genes that might be involved in myocarditis induced by clozapine. The study involved epigenetics, a growing field that looks at how chemical changes regulate whether genes are turned on or off.
Bhatt D, Kopchick J, Abel CC II, Khatib D, Thomas P, Rajan U, Zajac-Benitez C, Haddad L, Amirsadri A, Stanley JA, Diwadkar VA.
Learning-evoked centrality dynamics in the schizophrenia brain: entropy, heterogeneity, and inflexibility of brain networks.
J Psychiatry Neurosci 2025;50:E337–50 (https://doi.org/10.1139/jpn-25-0063).
This study used a new approach to understanding schizophrenia, involving how the importance of brain regions within a network change over time during learning, as shown by functional MRI scans. The researchers compared brain networks between people with schizophrenia and those without the illness while they were performing a learning task. Results showed striking differences, with people without the illness showing flexible and coordinated shifts in network organization. By contrast, people with schizophrenia had fewer functional sub-networks, more random network behaviour, and networks that were less responsive to the demands of the task. The study showed how brain networks change over time. It also provides a way to study other mental illnesses in future.
About the Prize
Dr. Francis Wayne Quan Memorial Prize is co-sponsored by the Mach-Gaensslen Foundation of Canada and JPN. The prize was launched in January 2022 to honour the contributions of psychiatrist and former editor Dr. Francis Wayne Quan to the foundation and the journal.
Dr. Quan, who died 9 August 2021 after a brief battle with kidney cancer, was one of the founders and the first managing editor of the Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, the predecessor of JPN, from 1976 to 1983. He was also a director of the Mach-Gaensslen Foundation of Canada from 2016 to his death. These experiences were among Dr. Quan’s many contributions during his busy career as an eminent psychiatrist in Ottawa.
The Mach-Gaensslen Foundation of Canada would like to congratulate this year’s prize winners. For more information about the winning papers, see the announcement on the website of the journal’s publisher, Canadian Science Publishing.
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