Severe Mental Illness: From Polygenicity to Biology

Save the date for the next Stanley Symposium!
September 19-20, 2023

This two-day symposium, chaired by Steve Hyman, Guoping Feng and Ben Neale, brought together leading scientists working on the genetics, neurobiology, and treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and related neuropsychiatric disorders.

The central theme this year was addressing the challenges of turning genetic results that reveal extreme polygenicity into useful biological insights that can help patients. Graduate students and postdoctoral associates are especially welcomed to this symposium in order to build this interdisciplinary field and address the unmet medical needs of patients and their families at a time of great opportunity and urgency.

All sessions were held in the auditorium of the ӳ��ý, 415 Main Street, Cambridge MA 02142.

Agenda Day 1 Monday, September 16, 2019
Session 1: Genetics: Setting the Problem, revealing the challenge Chair: Ben Neale
8:15 – 8:50 Breakfast in Lobby 8:50 – 9:00 Welcome Steve Hyman ӳ��ý 9:00 – 9:10 Session Introduction Massachusetts General Hospital/ӳ��ý 9:10 – 9:40 Common genetic variants associated with Schizophrenia: a Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) collaboration Charité University/Massachusetts General Hospital 9:40 – 10:10 Leveraging polygenicity for biological insight from genome-wide association data ӳ��ý 10:10 – 10:40 ENIGMA at 10: What have we learned from a decade of large scale collaborative meta-analysis in neuroimaging QIMR Berghofer 10:40 – 11:00 Coffee Break 11:00 – 11:30 Adaptively using auxiliary data to discover risk genes provides powerful insights into mental illnesses Carnegie Mellon University 11:30 – 12:00 Interpreting genetic associations with detailed human behavioral data Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health/ӳ��ý 12:00 – 12:45 Panel Discussion: How do we put the genetics to work , , , , 12:45 – 1:15 Lunch
Short talks selected from submitted abstracts
1:15 – 1:20 Intro to short talks MIT/ӳ��ý 1:20 – 1:35 Short Talk I Silvia Velasco Harvard University/Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research 1:35 – 1:50 Short Talk II Richard Smith Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Session 2: Clinical Translation: phenotyping and patient stratification Chair: Morgan Sheng
1:50 – 2:00 Session Introduction Morgan Sheng ӳ��ý 2:00 – 2:30 Clinical utility of polygenic risk for prediction in high risk populations UCLA 2:30 – 3:00 Using fluid biomarkers to investigate brain disorders University of Gothenburg 3:00 – 3:20 Coffee Break 3:20 – 3:50 Primary prevention of brain disease Eric Minikel & Sonia Vallabh ӳ��ý 3:50 – 4:20 Patient selection strategies for clinical trails in monogenic and complex neurological disease Sally John Biogen 4:20 – 4:50 Designing Imaging Biomarkers for Microglia States Flo Wagner ӳ��ý & Boston Children’s Hospital/ӳ��ý 4:50 – 5:00 Closing remarks from session chair
Poster Session & Reception
5:15 – 7:00 McGovern Institute Atrium

Day 2 Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Session 3: Enabling Technologies Chair: Evan Macosko
8:15 – 8:50 Breakfast in Lobby 8:50 – 9:00 Session Introduction Harvard Medical School/ӳ��ý 9:00 – 9:30 Dissecting Neural Circuits Across Model Systems with Cell Type and Single Cell Resolution Salk Institute 9:30 – 10:00 Single-cell transcriptome imaging and cell atlas of brain tissues Harvard University 10:00 – 10:20 Coffee Break 10:20 – 10:50 The circuit dynamics of brain states Stanford University 10:50 – 11:20 Analyzing animal behavior using machine vision and learning Janelia Research Campus 11:20 – 11:30 3 Teaser talks for poster session #2 Tarjinder Singh Massachusetts General Hospital Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research on behalf of the SCHEMA consortium 11:30 – 11:40 ChangHui Pak Stanford University University of Massachusetts Amherst 11:40 – 11:50 Seth Hopkins Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. 11:50 – 1:00 Lunch and poster session round 2
Keynote
1:00 – 1:05 Keynote Introduction Steve Hyman 1:05 – 2:00 Keynote: Our restless brains - Exploring the universe within Washington University in St Louis
Session 4: Biology enabled by new models Chair: Paola Arlotta
2:00 – 2:10 Session Introduction Harvard University/ӳ��ý 2:10 – 2:50 Coupling Genotype to Phenotype: Genetic Buffering, Homeostatic Plasticity and a Phenotypic Spectrum UCSF 2:50 – 3:20 Translating genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease into mechanisms of disease VIB-KU Leuven 3:20 – 3:40 Dissecting mechanisms of FMRP in RNA processing using human stem cell models Lindy Barrett ӳ��ý 3:40 – 4:00 Coffee Break 4:00 – 4:20 Innovations in Primate Interneuron Repertoire ӳ��ý 4:20 – 4:50 Conservation and divergence of human brain cell types Allen Institute 4:50 – 5:20 Taking Stock: Where do we go from here? , , , Steve McCarroll, 5:20 – 5:30 Concluding remarks from symposium chairs