The NIMH Genetics Initiative is driven by the need to understand the inherited (genetic), environmental and physiologic causes of mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and autism. This goal will be most readily attained if annotated clinical data and biological materials (i.e., DNA, RNA, plasma proteins, and cell lines) produced from the blood of affected and unaffected individuals in large cohorts or families are shared among many researchers. To this end, the NIMH has established a central resource for producing and banking biological materials and associated clinical data. Per NIH data sharing policies, this resource, currently known as the NIMH Center for Collaborative Genetic Studies of Mental Disorders (""""""""the Center""""""""), has distributed these biological samples and clinical data to a large number of qualified researchers investigating the causes of mental disorders. We have maintained the Center since September 1998, during which 70,797 blood samples were submitted to the Center, including an unprecedented 52,578 samples since July 2003. Due to technical improvements the Center has processed submitted blood samples into lymphoblast cell lines with an unprecedented 99.7% success. Since July 2003, the Center has distributed 306,423 DNA samples and 4,006 lymphoblast cell lines, and made more than 400 distributions of clinical and genetic data to ~300 mental health researchers. The scope and quality of these distributed resources have empowered the field of mental health genetics to produce a better understanding of the biology of mental disorders. Herein, we propose to continue as the Center for Genomic Studies on Mental Disorders. The Biologics Core will continue to produce and distribute renewable biologic research resources from blood and cell lines. The Data Management and Genomics Core will continue improvements to the web-based repository of clinical and genotype data and associated bioinformatics and computational genomics tools. The Analysis Core will produce methodology designed to integrate and analyze large, independent sets of genetic and clinical data. The overriding aim of the Center is to continue to serve the scientific needs of NIMH and other mental health researchers in a flexible and innovative manner while respecting human subject confidentiality, informed consent issues, and PI prerogatives.
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