Patrick Sullivan, MD, FRANZCP (Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Psychiatry) has been awarded a new R01 grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) as part of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) titled “Discovery and Impact”.
The study is designed to identify “actionable” variation via the empirical evaluation of the etiological, clinical, nosological, therapeutic, and biological significance of genomic findings. The PGC will continue studies to understand the roles of common genetic variation by: (a) comprehensively analyzing historically large GWA samples for nine major psychiatric disorders; (b) evaluating how genetic risk scores impact development and clinical symptom patterns; (c) understand the genetic relationship among psychiatric disorders and across psychiatric disorders and many other CNS diseases. PGC will enhance work on the discovery of rare variation by: (d) conducting mega-analyses of copy number variation across nine psychiatric disorders; (e) efficiently and inexpensively re-sequencing regions implicated by GWAS (200 candidate genes in 20,000 subjects); and (f) using the hundreds of clinicians in the PGC, identify rare densely affected pedigrees to enable searches for rare variants of strong effect. Dr. Cynthia Bulik, PhD, FAED (Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders, Founding Director of the UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders and Professor, Nutrition) serves as the co-PI for this grant.