Our Research
Our Research
Our laboratory focuses on the contribution of genes and environment interaction to the pathophysiology of severe mental disorders, including eating disorders, OCD, Tourette's disorder, major depression, suicidal behavior and schizophrenia. In addition, we assessed the role of genetic variants in the response of depressed children and adolescents to antidepressants using a pharmacogenetic approach.
We have a long-standing interest in the association between 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) and psychiatric manifestations, especially schizophrenia, since this copy number variation (CNV) is the highest known risk factor for schizophrenia (30% develop schizophrenia in adulthood). We search for genetic variants within the 22q11.2 deletion region as well as in whole genome and epigenome that may contribute to the neuropsychiatric phenotypes in 22q11.2DS.
To this end we use a variety of molecular and bioinformatics approaches, including identification of de novo and hereditary mutations (CNVs, SNVs and ins/del), analyses of whole exome sequencing (WES), comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) array, epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) and transcriptome screening.
