TOP Group in Psychiatric Genetics Consortium - Genome Wide Association Study

Schizophrenia (SCZ) and Bipolar disorder (BIP) are severe psychiatric disorders characterized by psychotic symptoms, cognitive dysfunction and poor outcome, and are major public health problems with a high cost for society. The heritability is high, but d espite the clear genetic component, the pathophysiology is still not known and few susceptibility genes are discovered. We propose to greatly increase the likelihood of discovering new genes by combining several Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) in a large international collaborative effort (Psychiatric Genetic Collaboration - PGC) with a total of 11 000 SCZ, 7000 BIP and 15 000 controls subjects. The project will include clinical and GWAS data collected from a total of 750 subjects with SCZ, BIP and controls from the ongoing TOP study, and focus on data analysis using new biostatistical tools necessary for the huge amount of data. Specifically, there will be a Central Analysis Group responsible for the overall analyses, and specific Disease Work gro ups responsible for the disease specific analyses. Personnel from the TOP group will participate in both work groups, but it would be important to fund a full statistician position in order for the Norwegian researchers to get more involved and get hands on experience with the largest Psychiatric Genetic studies yet performed. The analysis will be finished by the summer of 2009, and final results published and made publicly available by the end of 2009. The project is based on the TOP study, a multicenter transdisciplinary research effort in the Oslo area, involving statisticians, and in collaboration with Univ. of Bergen. This international project will have strategic impact on developing neuropsychiatric research in Norway, since it gives an unprecedent ed access to world leading experts in the field and international contacts.