Epigenetics in Psychiatry

Dr Jacob Peedicayil completed MBBS in 1984 and MD in pharmacology in 1991, both at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. From 1993 to 1995 he did a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India. From 1995 to 1998 he worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Neurological Sciences, Christian Medical College, Vellore. Since 1998 he has been on the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology, Christian Medical College, Vellore, becoming a professor in 2007. He does theoretical research on epigenetics, focusing on epigenetics in psychiatry. In addition, he is involved in experimental research in smooth muscle pharmacology. Dr Dennis R. Grayson received his PhD from the Department of Biochemistry at Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1984. He has been interested in mechanisms associated with gene expression for over 35 years. He joined the laboratory of Dr James E. Darnell at the Rockefeller University as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in 1984 to study cell-type specific transcription factors and their interaction with promoters and enhancers. In 1988, Dr Grayson joined the Fidia-Georgetown Institute for the Neurosciences at Georgetown University to study gene expression programs in neurons and continued this research program at Allegheny Singer Research Institute
in Pittsburgh from 1995 to 1998. He continued his interests in psychiatry and joined the Psychiatric Institute at the University of Illinois in 1998. This represented a unique opportunity to pursue the molecular underpinnings of schizophrenia. Dr Grayson has received NRSA post-doctoral support, and R01 and K04 funding from the National Institutes of Health to support his work. He has published over 140 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is regularly invited to speak at numerous national and international meetings. He is currently Director of the Epigenetic Core of the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics. Dr. Dimitrios Avramopoulos received his MD from the University of Athens, Greece in 1990 and his PhD from the University of Crete in 1995 for his work on mapping human genes on chromosome 21 and deciphering the origin of chromosomal non-disjunction in trisomy 21, mentored by Dr Stylianos Antonarakis. He undertook his post-doctoral work at Johns Hopkins University where he became a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry in 2002. He is currently on the faculty of the Department of Genetic Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University where he works on the genetics of psychiatric disorders. He is interested in the identification and functional follow up of disease-causing variants in the genome. He uses cellular models and genome editing to decipher the mechanisms through which disease - associated variants affect the brain, individually or in combinations, through the disruption of functional networks and the regulation of the corresponding genes.