Dr. Krista Lanctot is a professor Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Lanctot it the executive director of MORE research group at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She has her PhD Clinical Pharmacologist and is working in the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Research Program. She is known for clinical trials involving patients with dementia and the treatment of agitation and aggression, as well as apathy. We were fortunate to be able to talk to Dr. Lanctot about her work in the questions below.
1. What sparked you interest in dementia research? Can you tell us more about the research you do?
When I first came to Sunnybrook, there were no medications for Alzheimer’s disease, and people with behavioural problems were still being given sedating medications. With my PhD in Clinical Pharmacology, I thought that there must be a better way to help these people. I decided that the key missing pieces were understanding the underlying neurobiology of the behaviours, and personalizing treatment. I lead a large lab whose goal is to optimize drug treatments by doing just that. We look at the behaviours, brain and biomarkers, and use that information to suggest and test new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. My group also looks at early neurobiologic changes that precede dementia, and are now testing an intervention that may prevent these devasting yet common diseases.
2. What is the most challenging part about your research?
The most challenging part is the ongoing need to secure funding in this era of increasing budgets and complexity with shrinking availability of research funds.
3. Over the years, how have you seen the treatment of agitation and aggression improve? What is currently being done to treat these symptoms in people with dementia?
We are now using a wider armamentarium of medications, and no longer rely on sedation. There have been big improvements. We are also testing new medications, but now use the more personalized and rational approach that my group and others have now championed. Our most recent discovery was that low doses of synthetic THC can help with agitation and aggression.
4. Apathy is a common issue faced when working with people with dementia. What is the underlying cause? What can be done to engage them?
There are lots of underlying causes of apathy because whole brain circuits have to be in tact to promote motivated and goal-directed behavior. The first step is always looking at the environment. After that has been optimized, we also look at prescribing medications. My group showed that the deficits in the dopaminergic brain reward system were contributing to apathy, and more recently that the pro-dopaminergic drug methylphenidate could help some dementia people by improving apathy.
Read more about Dr. Krista Lanctot here: https://sunnybrook.ca/research/team/member.asp?t=11&page=172&m=102
