The CRC for Mental Health is very pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Ashley Bush as its Chief Scientific Officer.
Professor Bush is a psychiatrist and translational neuroscientist. He currently heads the Oxidation Biology Laboratory at the Mental Health Research Institute (MHRI at the University of Melbourne. He is also the co-director of Biomarker Discovery within the Australian Imaging Biomarker Lifestyle Flagship Study of Ageing (AIBL), a CSIRO initiative. In addition, he was one of the founders of Prana Biotechnology Ltd (a public company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange). He was a contracted scientific advisory consultant at Prana for many years, until he resigned from that position in October 2011.
As Chief Scientific Officer to CRC for Mental Health Limited (a not for profit public company), Professor Bush will provide scientific oversight and advice to the organisation on its research into mental health diseases, psychoses and mood disorders. The CRC’s research focuses particularly on “biomarkers”, representing a change in research direction to the field in which Professor Bush previously worked at Prana, but being an area in which he has worked at MHRI and at AIBL.
“Biomarkers could be an enormous aid in the early detection and clinical trial monitoring of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease or schizophrenia,” said Professor Bush, speaking on his appointment.
“CRC for Mental Health researchers will be looking for specific cells, small molecules or subtle brain image changes which could be the first signs of disease. Any of these biomarkers might allow us to diagnose mental health issues before the onset of mental decline.”
The CRC for Mental Health was established under the Cooperative Research Centres program, an Australian Government Initiative. The CRC program supports end-user driven research collaborations to address major challenges facing Australia.
