Hector J. Caruncho, Ph.D.
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JAD profile
Associate Editor
Term Expiration:
12/31/2025
Affiliation(s):
Division of Medical Sciences University of Victoria; Department of Psychiatry University of British Columbia
Areas of Interest:
Biomarkers for neuropsychiatric disorders, reelin, Neural plasticity, behavioural studies, cognition, animal models
Biography & Research:
I currently hold a Canada Research Chair in Translational Neuroscience at UVIC. My primary research interests focus on the neurobiology of mood and psychotic disorders; biomarkers of early diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic efficacy in mood and psychotic disorders; reelin-based therapeutics for mental disorders; patient-oriented research in mental health; and embedding people with lived experience within my lab activities. I also frequently volunteer to give talks on mental health within the community.
My preclinical research centres primarily on the roles of the extracellular matrix protein Reelin in emotion and cognition, particularly evaluating Reelin based therapeutics in the context of major depression and Alzheimer’s disease (see “most significant contributions” section). A second line of research focuses on developing biomarkers of differential diagnosis and therapeutic efficacy for mental disorders, and have resulted in two patent applications and an agreement with the Institute for Advancing Innovations in Medicine (AIM) and the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation, as well as with the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Alvaro Cunqueiro Hospital Galicia-South Health Research Foundation, in Spain, to carry out a clinical trial for proper validation of our biomarkers’ strategy. My third research line focusses of Patient-Oriented Research, including participation in activities and meetings with NGOs focussing on mental health and cognition, and on embedding People with Live(d) Experience in research activities/discussions in my lab.
As the Principal Investigator of the Mental Health Research Cluster at UVIC, we organize workshops and other activities among UVIC researchers, external partners, PWLE, and with a heavy component of students’ participation (including trainees being part of the workshops organizing committees).
As a senior faculty member that has been affiliated as faculty with five Universities in 3 different countries (see “mentoring” section) I have taken leadership roles in developing Neuroscience graduate programs both in Spain and Canada, and in organizing multiple international research workshops on mental health both in Spain and the US. During my tenure as Vice-Dean in the faculty of Biology at Santiago de Compostela in Spain I also engaged in curriculum development and in fostering undergraduate and graduate research in mental health.
I am heavily involved in collaborative research primarily with colleagues in the US (National Institute of Mental Health and University of Illinois at Chicago), and in Canada (Institute for Advancing Innovation in Medicine at the Royal Columbian Hospital in Vancouver, UBC, and University of Saskatchewan Neural-Health Program), as well as with colleagues form UVIC and clinicians at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria as part of the Cognitive Health Initiative that focusses on the development of early biomarkers of diagnosis and prognosis of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. I usually foster research stays of my students with partner institutions, which sometimes opens new doors for them (for example my former PhD student Jenessa Johnston is currently a postdoc at NIMH after having done a research stay there when she was a grad student in my lab).
