The Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics

Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease each run in families, but the specific genetic faults that cause them have remained stubbornly hidden. This Centre will systematically hunt down those faults across tens of thousands of patient genomes. Why this matters: For decades, psychiatrists have diagnosed these conditions based on symptoms alone, not biology. Without knowing the underlying molecular causes, treatments remain blunt instruments that work for some patients but fail others. The genetic complexity—many genes, each with a small effect—has made progress slow. If the research succeeds, it will transform diagnosis from symptom checklists into biological tests. A patient with early memory loss could learn whether their Alzheimer’s risk stems from a specific gene variant, and receive a drug tailored to that variant. For schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, identifying genetic subtypes could predict which patients will respond to existing medications and which need alternatives. The Centre will also build the fundamental knowledge needed for entirely new drug targets—molecules that current treatments do not touch. This is primarily curiosity-driven fundamental science, but the payoff is a future where psychiatric medicine is as precise as cancer genomics is today.