Program for Translational Research
The Program for Translational Research (Program Head: Anil K. Malhotra, M.D.) has two major goals:
- to identify the biological factors that influence risk for major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and
- to understand the relationship between biological risk factors and clinical manifestations of these disorders that critically impact outcome of schizophrenia such as treatment response, symptom severity and neurocognitive and neuroimaging parameters.
The group has published papers reporting association of the genes DTNBP1 (dysbindin) with schizophrenia, neurocognitive function, and negative symptoms; DISC1 (Disrupted in Schizophrenia - 1) with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as neurocognitive function and positive symptoms of illness; COMT (catechol-o-metyhltransferase) with a range of psychiatric disorders and neurocognitive function; BDNF (Brain-derived neurotrophic factor) with schizoaffective disorder and brain morphology, DRD2 (dopamine receptor type 2) with treatment response in first episode schizophrenia; as well as completed the first whole genome association study in schizophrenia. This extensive work requires a multidisciplinary approach involving clinical researchers, neuropsychologists, brain imaging researchers, molecular geneticists and analytical genomics investigators.
To that end, the Program has active collaborations with investigators within the Feinstein Institute as well as multiple external collaborations with institutions such as Harvard Partners, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the National Institutes of Health. An ongoing collaboration with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory brings additional cutting-edge genomic approaches, including copy number variation and next-generation sequencing, to the study of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and a collaboration with the Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics served a similar role. Collaborations with leading neuroscientists at UCLA have generated several key publication using advanced morphometric algorithms to identify abnormalities of brain size and shape in patients with schizophrenia, and collaboration with basic biologists at Johns Hopkins University yielded novel findings about gene-gene interactions in schizophrenia.
Laboratories within the Program for Translational Research consist of the Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry, led by Anil Malhotra, MD; the Laboratory of Analytic Genomics, led by Todd Lencz, PhD; the
Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, led by Philip Szeszko, PhD; and the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience led by Terry Goldberg, PhD.