Thu, Nov 03, 2022 page2

• NTU team joins major study on bipolar disorder

  FOCUS ON ASIA: While Asians account for about 60% of reported bipolar disorder cases worldwide, they make up only about 10% of genetic study participants

  • By Yang Mien-chieh / Staff reporter
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  A research team at National Taiwan University (NTU) has joined the first major genetic research on bipolar disorder in Asia, which received five years of funding from the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

  Existing genetic studies are mainly based on Europeans, but the new research program in Asia — A-BIG-NET program — is to focus on gene mutations and the genetic structure of bipolar disorder among Asian ethnic groups.

  A research team led by NTU College of Public Health professor Kuo Po-hsiu (郭柏秀) is to work with research teams from top universities in other countries in hopes of finding better treatment options for the disease.

  

  National Taiwan University College of Public Health professor Kuo Po-hsiu is pictured in an undated photograph.

  Photo courtesy of National Taiwan University

  Bipolar disorder is a mental illness that is highly linked to genetics and a complex mixture of risk factors, with a lifetime prevalence of about 1 to 2 percent, but the link between certain genetic mutations and the onset of bipolar disorder is unclear.

  About 60 percent of reported bipolar disorder cases worldwide are Asians, but Asians make up only about 10 percent of genetic study participants. As many of the research findings and drug development were based on studies in European countries, they might not be applicable to other ethnic groups.

  The A-BIG-NET program is led by Hailiang Huang, an assistant professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, NTU said.

  Aside from NTU, other participants in the program include a team led by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics professor Kenneth Kendler, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professor Peter Zandi.

  The research network also includes the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in India, the Institute of Mental Health in Singapore and other facilities in the region.

  There is no existing large-scale genetic study on bipolar disorder among Asian ethnic groups, so while Asians account for a large percentage of the global population, they are underrepresented in psychiatric genetics studies, and have been excluded from the benefits gained by therapeutic innovations.

  Kuo said Taiwan has often been excluded from international organizations and actions, so it is an honor to participate in the study network to help enrich the global diversity of the database, and contribute to the understanding of the severe mental disorder, hopefully reducing health inequalities in the long run.

  The A-BIG-NET program is to recruit from East Asia and Southeast Asia 27,500 people with bipolar disorder, and 15,000 without the disease for the control group, and use the latest genomic sequencing technology for deep sequencing and decoding, NTU said.

  The study aims to identify the genetic variations associated with bipolar I disorder (“bipolar one,” also known as manic-depressive disorder), and also explore the interactive relationship between the phenotype and genetic variation and environmental risk factors.

  The study will also conduct a comparative analysis with the data from mental disorder studies in Europe, Africa and Latin America, to understand the molecular mechanism of severe mental disorders.
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