Aiden Corvin, Trinity College Dublin
Thursday, 5 December 2013 at 14:00 in the Large Operon, EMBL Heidelberg
Aiden Corvin, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Schizophrenia 2013: the journey from 'madness' to molecular etiology
Abstract
Schizophrenia affects about 1% of the adult population, but remains poorly understood and a significant research challenge. More than a century of research has brought us to the current clinical diagnosis, for what is a substantially heritable condition. Recently, through advances in genomics, significant progress is being made in understanding the molecular etiology of the disorder. The emerging picture identifies a complex genetic architecture, involving overlap with other psychiatric disorders and a small, but significant subset of patients with potentially definable genetic syndromes. This work is defining molecular mechanisms and pathways which may be important for the evolution of future treatments and the development of personalized therapeutics. For patients and clinicians, this may re-define how we diagnosis and treat schizophrenia in the coming years.
Biography
Professor Aiden Corvin of the Department of Psychiatry Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland is a leading researcher in schizophrenia genetics. He completed his medical degree at University College Cork in 1993 and his PhD at TCD in 2005, based on work from a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship in schizophrenia genetics. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist at Ireland's at St James' Hospital Dublin (Ireland's largest teaching hospital). His group is interested in identifying and investigating risk genes for psychosis as a means of improving understanding of disease biology, to develop better diagnostics methods, and to establish new therapeutics approaches. He was one of the founder PI's of the International Schizophrenia Consortium and heads schizophrenia research with the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2. He has published ~150 peer reviewed articles in journals including Nature, Nature Genetics, JAMA Psychiatry and Molecular Psychiatry. His work is funded by NIMH, the Wellcome Trust, Science Foundation Ireland and FP7.
Psychosis Research Group at Trinity College Dublin