Approved Research

Using multi-omics data to explore the pathogenesis and mechanism of neurological and psychiatric disorders

Lay summary

Neurological disorders including epilepsy, learning disabilities and autism, and psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety and schizophrenia have become a heavy burden on our society around the world. But the causes of these disorders are still very limited, so we don't have many methods to treat the patients with these disorders. Therefore, it's very urgent to explore the mechanisms behind these disorders and then develop novel therapeutic targets for them. It is believed that both environmental factors and genetics contribute to these disorders. In the study, we'd like to fully utilize the abundant environmental and genetic data from UK Biobank to systematically investigate the causes and consequences of these above-mentioned disorders. We plan to use the whole dataset of the UK Biobank for 5 years. We hope that through our work the knowledge about these disorders can be expanded and more therapeutic potential targets can be discovered.