Associate Professor Nastassja Koen
Associate Professor
MBChB UCT, PhD (Psychiatry) UCT
Position
- Associate Professor and Head: Division of Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
- Co-Head: Psychiatric Genetics Group, Brain-Behaviour Unit (BBU), UCT Neuroscience Institute
- Co-Director: South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Unit on Risk and Resilience in Mental Disorders
Research Areas
- Genomic, epigenomic and transcriptomic neurobiology of trauma-related disorders
- Transgenerational effects of traumatic stress and related disorders
- Psychiatric genomics in Africa
Current projects
- Transgenerational effects of maternal stressors: Investigating the role of infant gene expression
- Understanding the transgenerational epigenetic effect of maternal psychosocial trauma exposure on infants via lncRNA-sequencing
- Childhood adversity, DNA methylation, and psychopathology symptoms: A longitudinal study of sensitive periods and chrono-epigenetics
Publications: