Researcher profile

Aitchison KJ

Dr. Katherine Aitchison is the Associate Director, Mental Health, for the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute, a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics, and Physician Coordinator of the Edmonton Mood and Anxiety Disorder Program at the University of Alberta and with Alberta Health Services. She trained in medicine with a first class honours degree in Physiological Sciences (and a university prize, as joint second in the year) at the University of Oxford, and then in psychiatry residency at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London. Her PhD (King’s College London; Wellcome Trust funded) in psychiatry was on the pharmacogenetics of cytochrome P450 enzymes and their role in response to antidepressants and antipsychotics. She completed a Travelling Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health where she conducted sequencing and genotyping of CYP1A2 and a CYP1A2 knock-out mouse study in the laboratory of Dr. Frank Gonzalez (working with S. Kimura, who was the first to sequence the CYP2D6 gene), and at the University of Colorado (USA), where she conducted site-directed mutagenesis and in vitro reporter gene assays of the effects of mutations in the CYP1A2 promoter that she had identified. From 2004-2008, she served as Deputy (Acting) Coordinator for an 18-centre European Commission funded Integrated Project on pharmacogneomics including a clinical trial plus in vitro and in vivo work called Genome-based therapeutic drugs for depression (GENDEP). She joined U of A in September 2011 as an Alberta Centennial Addiction & Mental Health Research Chair. In 2013 she won a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) award for laboratory equipment for precision health work and matching funding from Alberta Innovation and Advanced Education (IAE), Small Equipment Grants Program. In 2018, together with Dr. Chad Bousman (U of C), she was awarded an Alberta Innovates Strategic Research Project in precision health: PRIME - Pharmacogenomics for the Prevention of Adverse Drug Reactions in mental health. This has facilitated the continued development of innovations in pharmacogenomics for application in mental health and addictions, and in medicine more widely. Dr. Aitchison serves/has served on various committees including Campus Alberta Neuroscience Advisory Committee, Canadian Psychiatric Association Research Committee (Chair), Society of Biological Psychiatry Inclusivity Task Force (Chair), Society of Biological Psychiatry Ambassador Program, Pharmacogene Variation Consortium, Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium and the Genetic Testing Committee, International Society of Psychiatric Genetics. Honors include an Alberta Health Services President's Excellence Award for Outstanding Achievements in Patient and Family-Centred Care (2018, to the Edmonton Early Psychosis Intervention Clinic, for which she was lead psychiatrist at the time). She has published more than 290 papers and been cited more than 7900 times (Publons, h-index ≥52; Google Scholar h-index ≥62, i10-index ≥126).