Corradin Lab

Biological sex is a potent modifier of health. Yet, for decades, science has overlooked conditions that disproportionately affect women. Now researchers at Whitehead Institute are challenging the status quo and making strides to understand — and transform — key aspects of women’s health.

Whitehead Institute Member Olivia Corradin and colleagues have developed a system to find patterns in seemingly random differences between the genomes of people affected and unaffected by a disease. They can use these patterns to identify genes that contribute to complex diseases and disorders, such as opioid use disorder.

Pavana Rotti is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Olivia Corradin’s lab studying the neurobiology of opioid use disorder. We sat down with Pavana to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

Whitehead Institute researchers are making discoveries that are helping us rethink what we know about the brain and paving the way for therapies to treat some of the most challenging brain disorders and diseases.

Read about brain-related research at Whitehead Institute.

A group of researchers from multiple universities, including Whitehead Institute Member Olivia Corradin, gained new insights into the genetics of opioid overdose risk by looking at changes in gene regulation in the brain.

Whitehead Institute director Ruth Lehmann announced the appointment of two dynamic new Members: Olivia Corradin, currently a Whitehead Fellow, and Siniša Hrvatin, currently an instructor and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

Whitehead Institute attracts people that are driven — and often that means people that bring an impressive level of intensity to their hobbies and side projects, too. Some have leaned on their outside interests to find balance and respite during the COVID-19 pandemic — and often as not, they parlay their interests to contribute to the community at the same time.

On this episode of AudioHelicase podcast, Whitehead Fellow Olivia Corradin talked about investigating the genetic underpinnings of diseases through a new technique she developed, the outside variant approach. Applying the method to study the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS), Corradin and colleagues identified a role for a cell type in the brain in MS, offering a new way of understanding the disease.