“Psychiatry is especially important, I think, [because of] the fact that in contrast to diseases of aging like Alzheimer’s and cancers, psychiatric diseases emerge in adolescence, and they’re with you the rest of your life. This has enormous consequences for families and society as a whole … so in many ways, it’s one of the most important areas that we should be doing genetics [in].”
This is a quote from a GenomeWeb interview with New York Genome Center’s (NYGC) Evnin Family Scientific Director and CEO, Tom Maniatis, PhD, on the Center’s decision to build a clinicogenomic database focused on severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The interview expands upon the Center and its clinical partners plan to collect the data samples that may “help improve diagnostic efficacy for these disorders, offering earlier and more sensitive measures of disease,” according to Dr. Maniatis.
