Ayman Fanous, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. Dr. Fanous previously served as chief
of Psychiatric Genetics at the Washington Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix Media Production
Much of the reporting around precision medicine focuses on diseases that wreak bodily harm, like cancer or autoimmune disorders. Research led by Ayman Fanous at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix is advancing precision psychiatry, an emerging field developing personalized treatments
for mental illnesses.
Like other areas of precision medicine, precision psychiatry builds treatments around a growing understanding of how genes, environmental factors, individual profiles for metabolites and proteins and other factors interact to cause depression, delusions, compulsive behaviors and other symptoms.
The work draws on international collaborations sampling genes from hundreds of thousands of patients, with data from the Million Veteran Program, a research initiative of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, proving especially helpful.
Veterans data offers samples from African Americans, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans in numbers historically lacking in medical research. This diversity helps investigators and minority populations alike, since these groups are the most likely to suffer health disparities and are underrepresented in other large-scale biological data sets.
AI provides critical assistance in processing the abundance of data. Research on genetic drivers alone means detecting which among more than three billion DNA base-pairs might cause certain proteins or cells to malfunction. While cystic fibrosis, for example, arises from a single gene mutation, risk for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is influenced by hundreds of genes.