Cross-Disorder Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders: Findings and Methodologic Challenges
Join us on Wednesday, March 11th for the Department of Epidemiology seminar series featuring Dr. Jordan Smoller discussing Cross-Disorder Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders: Findings and Methodologic Challenges.
Abstract: Psychiatric disorders are highly comorbid, heritable, and genetically correlated, raising fundamental questions about the nature of shared versus disorder-specific genetic influences. Large-scale genome-wide association studies and multivariate genetic models now provide compelling evidence for both pervasive pleiotropy and meaningful etiologic differentiation across major psychiatric disorders. This seminar will review key findings from recent cross-disorder genetic analyses including recent work characterizing shared and disorder-specific genetic architecture using multivariate genomic approaches. We will also discuss methodological challenges that complicate cross-disorder inference, including heterogeneity in phenotypic assessment, differences in case and control ascertainment, and selection biases inherent in clinical cohorts, electronic health records, and population biobanks. Addressing these challenges will be important for robust and clinically-meaningful inferences about the underlying structure of psychopathology.
Bio: Dr. Jordan Smoller is a psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist whose research focus has been understanding the genetic and environmental determinants of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and using big data to advance precision mental health including improved methods to reduce risk and enhance resilience.
Dr. Smoller is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Professor in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. At Massachusetts General Hospital, he is the Jerrold F. Rosenbaum Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, Director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry, Director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the Center for Genomic Medicine, and co-Director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at MGH and Harvard. Dr. Smoller is a Tepper Family MGH Research Scholar and also serves as Director of the Omics Unit of the MGH Division of Clinical Research and co-Director of the Mass General Brigham Training Program in Precision and Genomic Medicine. He is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute and past President of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.
He has played a leading role in national and international efforts to advance precision and genomic medicine. He is a Principal Investigator (PI) in the eMERGE (Electronic Medical Records and Genomics) network, founding PI of the PsycheMERGE Consortium and lead PI of the New England Precision Medicine Consortium as part of the NIH All of Us Research Program. He is also co-Chair of the Cross-Disorder Workgroup of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC). He is an author of more than 650 scientific publications and is also the author of The Other Side of Normal (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2012).
Speaker Information
Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD
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