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VCU’s Kenneth Kendler achieves No. 1 lifetime ranking among published psychiatry scholars

VCU’s Kenneth Kendler achieves No. 1 lifetime ranking among published psychiatry scholars

Kenneth Kendler, M.D., doesn’t love attention — he says he finds it “a little embarrassing.” But as a world-renowned researcher from his pioneering studies in psychiatric genetics, the Virginia Commonwealth University professor has continued to rake in the accolades throughout his decades-long career. The latest speaks to his legacy.

Kendler has long been among the top five most-cited researchers in the field, and in September 2023, he achieved the No. 1 lifetime ranking from ScholarGPS, which analyzes researchers and their publications ...

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CILSE doctoral candidate awarded NIH/NIDA grant

CILSE doctoral candidate awarded NIH/NIDA grant

Daniel Bustamante, a Ph.D. candidate in VCU Integrative Life Sciences doctoral program with a concentration on Behavioral & Statistical Genetics, was awarded a National Institute of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) F31 grant.

Bustamante is the Principle Investigator studying the risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse disorder (SUD) as a result of traumatic experiences during childhood and early adolescence. The project, titled “Longitudinal neuroimaging and statistical genetics modeling of substance use and trauma-related phenotypes,” will study ...

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Genome Comparisons Reveal DNA Risk Variants Differ in People of East Asian vs. European Ancestry

Genome Comparisons Reveal DNA Risk Variants Differ in People of East Asian vs. European Ancestry

An analysis of multiple genome-wide studies making associations between depression and “risk” locations in the human genome has provided a vivid demonstration that results can vary substantially depending on the ethnicity and even country of origin of those whose genomes are being studied.

Members of the major depression working group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and an international team of researchers that included 10 recipients of BBRF grants and prizes and two BBRF Scientific Council members, Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., and ...

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World’s largest study of genetic risk factors for depression will enroll 20,000 women

World’s largest study of genetic risk factors for depression will enroll 20,000 women

The five-year study involving VCU’s Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics aims to better understand major depressive disorder and diversity of genetic data.

team of researchers will lead the largest population study of its kind aimed at learning more about the genetic variations that affect individuals’ risk for depression after receiving a five-year, $8.98 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The study, “Identifying the Genetic Causes of Depression in a Deeply ...

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Cracking the code for resilience

Cracking the code for resilience

A VCU School of Medicine researcher is exploring the genetic underpinnings of trauma responses in the hope of improving mental health care.

Given current events ranging from the ongoing pandemic to giant wildfires and powerful hurricanes, it’s not surprising that many people find their emotional reserves are depleted. Statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation show that about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic, up from 1 in 10 ...

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How virtual reality may help explore the role of fear in youth at risk for violence and crime

How virtual reality may help explore the role of fear in youth at risk for violence and crime

A VCU professor has received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study conduct disorder and callous-unemotional traits using VR technology.

Conduct disorder — often characterized by aggression, theft, vandalism, violations of rules and lying — is one of the most prevalent and debilitating psychiatric disorders that emerges during childhood and adolescence.

There is a subgroup of those with conduct disorder who are more likely to engage in chronic violence and criminal behavior. These individuals display severe ...

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Stephen Hawking, who shined a light on black holes, dies at age 76

Stephen Hawking, who shined a light on black holes, dies at age 76

Stephen Hawking, the prodigious British theoretical cosmologist who became an international celebrity, died at his home in Cambridge, U.K., early today, at the age of 76. Hawking, who spent his entire career at the University of Cambridge, suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative nerve disease with which he was diagnosed in his 20s. The disease confined Hawking to a wheelchair for most of his adult life and eventually rendered him capable of speaking only through a computer-controlled voice synthesizer. ...

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Three new genetic markers associated with risk for depression

Three new genetic markers associated with risk for depression

Five markers have now been linked with the risk of depression, according to research from the VCU Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.

After becoming the first to definitively discover genetic markers for major depression, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and collaborators have found more genetic clues to the disease.

A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry details the discovery of three additional genetic risk markers for depression, which builds on the groundbreaking discovery of two genetic risk factors ...

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Major mental illnesses unexpectedly share brain gene activity, raising hope for better diagnostics and therapies

Major mental illnesses unexpectedly share brain gene activity, raising hope for better diagnostics and therapies

Mental illness affects one in six U.S. adults, but scientists’ sense of the underlying biology of most psychiatric disorders remains nebulous. That’s frustrating for physicians treating the diseases, who must also make diagnoses based on symptoms that may only appear sporadically. No laboratory blood test or brain scan can yet distinguish whether someone has depression or bipolar disorder, for example.

Now, however, a large-scale analysis of postmortem brains is revealing distinctive molecular traces in people with mental illness. This week, an ...

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VCU researchers recognized for being in the top 1 percent of most cited authors for 2017

VCU researchers recognized for being in the top 1 percent of most cited authors for 2017

Three Virginia Commonwealth University faculty have been recognized in a list of the top 1 percent of most-cited researchers in 2017. The list was aggregated by Clarivate Analytics, which uses data from Web of Science, a major scientific citation indexing service, to identify qualifying researchers.

VCU faculty on the Highly Cited Researcher list for 2017 include Arun Sanyal, M.D., a professor of internal medicine in the School of Medicine; Thomas Eissenberg, Ph.D., a professor of psychology in the College of Humanities ...

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