Dr. Argel Aguilar-Valles received his PhD in Neuroscience from McGill University in 2011. He went on to complete two postdoctoral fellowships at the Scipps Research Institute (Florida Campus) in 2012 and at McGill University in 2018. He joined Carleton University in 2019 as a faculty member and started his research lab.
Eligible to supervise at the undergraduate and graduate level.(Please email a brief description of your interests and CV.
The Aguilar-Valles Lab is interested in the molecular mechanisms that underlie psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. They use a combination of biochemistry, molecular biology, neuronal culture, and animal models to understand how genetic risk factors contribute to mental illness. Here are some of the research questions they are investigating:
Aguilar-Valles A, Rodrigue B, Matta-Camacho E. Maternal immune activation and the development of dopaminergic neurotransmission of the offspring: relevance for schizophrenia and other psychoses. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 11:852. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0685-8
De Gregorio D, Aguilar-Valles A, Preller KH, Heifets BD, Hibicke M, Mitchell J, Gobbi G. (2020) Hallucinogens in mental health: preclinical and clinical studies on LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine. The Journal of Neuroscience.
Wiebe S, Meng XQ, Kim SH, Zhang X, Lacaille JC, Aguilar-Valles A*, Sonenberg N* (2020) The eIF4E homolog 4EHP (eIF4E2) regulates hippocampal long-term depression and is necessary for social behaviour. Molecular Autism. 11:1-16. * These authors jointly directed this work.
De Gregorio D, Popic J, Enns JP, Inserra A, Skalecka A, Markopoulos A, Posa L, Lopez-Canul M, Qianzi H, Lafferty CK, Britt JP, Comai S, Aguilar-Valles A, Sonenberg N, Gobbi G (2021) Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) promotes social behavior through the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) in the excitatory neurotransmission of the medial prefrontal cortex. PNAS.
Aguilar-Valles A*, De Gregorio D, Matta-Camacho E, Elasmizade MJ, Khlaifia A, Skaleka A, Lopez-Canul M, Torres-Berrio A, Bermudez S, Rurak GM, Simard S, Salmaso N, Gobbi G, Lacaille JL, Sonenberg N*. (2020) Antidepressant ketamine actions engage cell-specific translation via eIF4E. Nature. *Jointly directed this work and are co-corresponding authors.
Aguilar-Valles A, Haji N, De Gregorio D, Matta-Camacho E, Eslamizade MJ, Popic J, Sharma V, Cao R, Rummel C, Tanti A, Wiebe S, Nunez N, Comai S, Nadon R, Luheshi G, Mechawar N, Turecki G, Lacaille JC, Gobbi G, Sonenberg N. Translational control of depression via phosphorylation of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E. In revision for Nature Communications.
Gantois I*, Khoutorsky A*, Popic J*, Aguilar-Valles A, Freemantle E, Cao R, Sharma V, Nagpal A, Gamache K, Chapat C, Pooters T, Nader K, Lacaille J-C, Gkogkas G, Sonenberg N. Chronic metformin treatment corrects behavioral, morphological and synaptic symptoms in a Fragile X Syndrome mouse model. Nature Medicine. 23(6):674-677 *Equal contribution
Aguilar-Valles A, Matta-Camacho E, Khoutorsky A, Nader K, Gkogkas C, Lacaille J-C, Sonenberg N (2015) Inhibition of group I metabotropic glutamate receptors reverses autistic-like phenotypes caused by deficiency of the translation repressor eIF4E Binding Protein 2. The Journal of Neuroscience. 35(31):11125-32
Aguilar-Valles A, Inoue W, Rummel C, Luheshi GN (2015) Obesity, adipokines and neuroinflammation. Neuropharmacology. 96(Pt A): 124-34
Aguilar-Valles A, Kim J, Jung S, Woodside B, Luheshi GN (2014) Role of brain transmigrating neutrophils in depression-like behavior during systemic infection. Molecular Psychiatry. 19(5): 599-606 (Featured in the cover)
