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Dr. Sklar completed clinical training in Psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian
Hospital and the New York State Psychiatric
Institute in Manhattan and research training
in the laboratories of Solomon Snyder (Johns
Hopkins Medical School) and Richard Axel
(Columbia University). Her primary laboratory
is located in the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental
Genetics Unit (PNGU) in the Center for Human
Genetic Research at Massachusetts General
Hospital, where she is an associate professor
of psychiatry and the associate director
of the PNGU. Dr. Sklar is also an associate
member of the Broad Institute.
Dr. Sklar is a neuroscientist, human geneticist
and clinical psychiatrist investigating
the genetic causes of psychiatric disorders,
including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
A major focus of her work is to identify
susceptibility genes for psychiatric diseases
by applying tools developed for understanding
and characterizing human sequence variation.
Additional work utilizes translational approaches
including mouse models of human behaviors
as alternate routes to disease genes as
well as identifying the specific biological
consequences of disease-causing variation.
Working closely with PNGU statistical geneticist
Shaun Purcell, there is also a strong focus
on the development of novel methods for
genetic analyses including gene-based and
pathway based tests, imputation, segmental
sharing (rare variants), epistasis, predictive
modeling, and exploration of the genetic
factors contributing to treatment response
in particular as applied to bipolar disorder
and schizophrenia.
Currently, Dr. Sklar’s group is part
of a several large consortia of researchers
exploring the genetics of schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder. Genome-wide association
analyses in bipolar disorder in over 4000
cases and 6000 controls have identified
several new genes for bipolar disorder.
Dr. Sklar is also a senior associate member
of the Broad Institute, as well as a founding
member of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric
Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and
Harvard and where she serves as director
of genetics. |
