Assistant Professor
|
Associate Member
Arun Tiwari
Location
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Research Interests
Bioinformatics, Drug Development, Epigenetics, Mental Health & Behavioral Conditions
Research Themes
Neuroscience, Brain Health
Accepting
Not currently accepting students
Research Synopsis:
| Dr. Tiwari’s research focuses on in-house and publicly available datasets to identify genetic factors that influence response to antidepressant and antipsychotic medications, including experience of adverse side effects. Ultimately, he aims to accelerate scientific understanding of drug response mechanisms by identifying novel drug targets using genome-wide methods that integrate genetics, epigenetics, and transcriptomics. These novel targets can be used to develop personalized medicine approaches to treating mental illness and optimize current treatments. This may, in turn, lead to decreased socioeconomic impact of mental illness. Dr. Tiwari’s current projects include a randomized clinical trial evaluating the extent to which certain genetic markers—previously identified in his work—may be used to predict adverse side effects (such as unwanted weight gain) in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. He is also analyzing publicly available, empirically validated polygenic risk scores to identify psychiatric patients at risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. |