Jim Crowley, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics, was awarded a new U01 titled “Trans-ancestry genomic analysis of obsessive-compulsive disorder” from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Dr. Crowley’s award is part of a collaborative study with a second U01 awarded to Dr. Eric Storch (Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences) at Baylor College of Medicine. Their collaborative project aims to diversify genomic analysis for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by collecting the largest ancestrally-diverse sample of OCD cases. They will collect DNA, phenotypes and genotypes for 5,000 Latino Americans with OCD through OCD clinics in Latin America and the US as part of the Latin American Trans-ancestry Initiative for OCD genomics (LATINO) study. New data collected from the LATINO study will be combined with ongoing efforts in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) OCD working group for GWAS and fine-mapping. Increasing ancestrally-diverse OCD samples will allow for greater overall power and the ability to detect ancestry-specific genetic loci for OCD. Co-Investigators on this award include Dr. Matt Halvorsen (Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics) at UNC and Dr. Paola Giusti-Rodriguez (Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry) at the University of Florida and subaward PIs Dr. Manuel Mattheisen (Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry) at Dalhousie University in Canada and Dr. Michele Pato (Professor and Director, Center for Genomics of Psychiatric Health and Addiction) at Rutgers University.