MAPS RESEARCH PROJECT – AUSTRALIA – SEPTEMBER 2017
Pilot Project Support
Preliminary research was conducted by a university student on practicum with Dr Akkari (Stephanie Lu). Stephanie undertook to collate findings of the currently available data in psychiatric genetics. This lead to a pilot project in a specific area of pharmacogenetics on antidepressant response. Stephanie summarised that the team would need to seek to “design an effective way to integrate genetic and other biomarker data into a pilot project through assessing a representative sample of individuals with a particular mental illness (e.g. depression, anxiety, schizophrenia).”
COMHWA (Consumers of Mental Health Western Australia) will be invited to participate.
Links
We are seeking to establish links with others who may be or have engaged in similar data collection exercises to see whether there are useful prospects for us to pursue.
Dr Nis Palm (via Anne Marie-Engel, via Maria Halphen)
Professor Nordentoft of the Department of Psychiatry at Copenhagen University Hospital is keen to work with us from his background in research on depression
Professor Assen Jablensky
Professor of Psychiatry, UWA; Director of the UWA Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry; Consultant Psychiatrist, Royal Perth Hospital. Professor Jablensky research includes work in: Clinical, biological and neurocognitive aspects of severe mental disorders, including the schizophrenia spectrum; population epidemiology of psychiatric disorders; genetic and neurophysiological biomarkers
WHAT IS PHARMACOGENETICS?
Pharmacogenetics is the study of how an individual’s genetic material affects their response to drugs through a combination of traditional pharmaceutical sciences (e.g. biochemistry) and knowledge of genes, proteins and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
We need help to raise funds and elicit donations to allow the production of short films to allow insight into the workings of this project. To assist with this, please see this page for DONATIONS information.
