Dr. Camilla Bellone
Associate Professor, University of Geneva
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, San Francisco
PhD, University of Milan, Italy
When Dr. Camilla Bellone was an undergraduate studying pharmacy at the University of Milan, she took a class that changed her life. The class was neuropsychopharmacology, and the professor, Dr. Monica Di Luca, ignited in Camilla a passion for neuroscience that has driven her career ever since. Today, Camilla is an associate professor at the University of Geneva. Her lab studies the molecular and circuit mechanisms underlying social behavior and neuropsychiatric disorders.
As a first-generation university student, Camilla found an important role model in Monica—she wanted to be just like her. And with that, Camilla began to dream of running a lab someday. With her newfound interest in the brain, Camilla joined Monica’s lab where—as a master’s student and then a PhD student—she studied the molecular basis of synaptic transmission. While she felt at home doing research, Camilla felt a mounting frustration that the molecular biology techniques she was employing did not allow her to observe and manipulate neuronal function. Molecular methods often entail analyzing neurons that are already dead or lysed; Camilla wanted to see neuronal communication in real time.
Thus, taking advantage of the fact that the University of Milan allowed its doctoral students to do half their PhDs abroad, Camilla finished her doctoral work at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. There, in the lab of Dr. Christian Lüscher, Camilla set out to understand how neuronal synapses change during addiction. It was not necessarily the research questions surrounding addiction that inspired Camilla; she was motivated instead by a desire to better understand the basic physiology of synaptic communication. During her PhD, Camilla focused on glutamatergic synapses onto the dopaminergic neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Working with brain slices from mice, she discovered that cocaine drives changes in the receptor composition on the postsynaptic cells, specifically an increase in the ratio of AMPA to NMDA receptors. Furthermore, she found that activation of a third type of receptor, mGluR1, could reverse the cocaine-induced changes in synaptic plasticity.
Still excited by neuroscience as well as by the opportunity to see more of the world, Camilla moved to the United States for her postdoc, joining the lab of Dr. Roger Nicoll at the University of California, San Francisco. Looking back, she appreciates that Roger was hands-off in terms of project selection; he gave his trainees the time and space to find a project that they were passionate about. Camilla became interested in the idea that postnatal experience might shape synapse development and function. Ultimately, she discovered that there are rapid activity-dependent changes in NMDA receptor subunit composition in neonatal mice but not in more mature mice. This subunit switching has immediate ramifications for the capacity of the synapse to integrate neuronal signals. The switching changes the charge transfer and kinetics of NMDA-evoked currents in the postsynaptic cell, thus likely altering the amount of activity required for driving synaptic plasticity.
After finishing her project in the Nicoll lab, Camilla moved back to Geneva, returning to the Lüscher lab for a second short postdoc. Wanting to integrate her PhD thesis with her postdoctoral work on development, she chose to study how cocaine administered to pregnant female mice affects early postnatal development in the offspring. Again turning her attention to glutamatergic synapses onto dopamine neurons in the VTA, Camilla found that in utero exposure to cocaine delayed the maturation of these synapses. She also discovered that positive modulation of mGluR1 could rescue maturation. During this second postdoc, Camilla applied for and received an Ambizione grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to fund her transition from postdoc to independent researcher.
When she started her lab at the University of Geneva, Camilla wanted to build upon her work on dopamine and reward circuits. However, instead of studying drugs of abuse, she chose to investigate these topics in the context of natural rewards. As she herself finds social interaction particularly rewarding, Camilla at first set out to study the synaptic basis of social behavior. While she did not lose her affection for the synapse, she was surprised by how much she loved complex behavioral analysis and thinking about systems neuroscience. Thus, her vision for her lab expanded from a cellular/molecular focus to an interrogation of social behavior at multiple levels, including the systems level. In her previous experience working with addiction, her research had taken a bottom-up approach: she found synaptic differences and then tried to identify how those differences influenced behavior, which often presented a challenge. In her own lab, she switched to a more top-down approach, first interrogating behavioral changes and then pursuing the underlying molecular mechanisms at the synapse. In addition to studying the basic neuroscience of social behavior, Camilla’s lab also investigates the mechanisms of social dysfunction that can occur in neuropsychiatric disorders.
As she advanced further in her career, Camilla was nervous about leaving benchwork behind. She loved the excitement of hands-on work and did not consider herself good at grant writing. Eventually, however, Camilla grew to love the multifaceted position of a PI: each day different than the one before it, with a continuous flow of new challenges and learning opportunities. She even came to love the creative process of crafting a grant. Most of all—and perhaps unsurprisingly, given her extroverted personality and her research topic—she loves the social aspects of being a PI, including leading a group of trainees and forging collaborations. Undoubtedly her trainees and collaborators find it incredibly rewarding to study reward systems with Camilla.
Find out more about Camilla and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Meenakshi’s full interview with Camilla on March 29, 2023 below!
