Tiina Paunio MD

Dr. Paunio performed her PhD work at the laboratory of Professor Leena Peltonen-Palotie during 1990-1995. This work led to DNA diagnostics of gelsolin-related amyloidosis and the revelation of pathogenic processing of mutant gelsolin in neuronal cells. During a 2-year post-doc period (1996-1998) at LGN-CNRS, Paris, she developed novel recombinant adenoviral vectors for gene therapy on an experimental model of Parkinson’s disease. Then, her focus shifted towards research on psychiatric traits, and she started working as a project leader for a large international collaboration on schizophrenia. This work led to understanding the truly heterogeneous background of psychosis as well as connections between genes, cognitive disturbances, and schizophrenia.