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Cognitive Phenotyping for Neuropsychiatric Therapeutics
Principal Investigator: Robert M. Bilder, Ph.D.
E-mail: rbilder@mednet.ucla.edu
The exploratory Center for Cognitive Phenomics (CCP) aims to accelerate identification and efficient measurement of cognitive phenotypes across syndromes and across species to advance interdisciplinary research on neuropsychiatric therapeutics. Cognitive abnormalities have been identified in all major neuropsychiatric disorders, offer quantitative phenotypes for genomic studies and clinical trials, and provide strong bridging relations to neural systems models. The CCP will iteratively refine cognitive phenotypes in interdisciplinary research using neurobehavioral, neuroimaging, and neuropsychopharmacological approaches to provide translational validation of physiological endophenotypes. The CCP will coordinate activities of a large group of experts at UCLA and elsewhere to: 1.) Generate cross-disorder and cross-species catalogs of phenotypes; 2.) Develop a phenotype selection algorithm to identify the most promising candidates for research; 3.) Design a phenomics database for empirical data representation, data mining, and hypothesis testing; and 4.) Support proof-of-concept pilot projects. To advance these aims, the CCP will initiate core services for: High-Throughput Cognitive Phenotyping; Neuroimaging; and Translational Neuropsychopharmacology. The CCP will initially leverage UCLA campus-wide resources to provide bridging infrastructure and expertise in: Genomics, Pharmacogenomics, and Statistical Genetics; Biostatistics and Psychometrics; Bioinformatics; Clinical Trial Design and Regulatory Affairs; and Bioethics. The CCP aims to overcome bottlenecks in the discovery of treatments for neuropsychiatric syndromes that are caused by the use of traditional behavioral "symptom" phenotypes, which are heterogeneous, overlapping, and difficult to translate to basic research. The long-term goal is establishment of a mature CCP that will provide the international research community with efficient, well-validated phenotype assays; a cognitive phenomics data repository linked to genomics, proteomics, and other biological knowledge-bases; and novel strategies for interdisciplinary research on neuropsychiatric therapeutics.
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