Pamela Sklar

Pamela Sklar
Born (1959-07-20) July 20, 1959
Baltimore, Maryland
Citizenship American
Fields NeuroscienceGenomicsPsychiatry
Institutions Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Alma mater St. John's College
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Pamela Sklar (born July 20, 1959 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She is chief of the Division of Psychiatric Genomics and professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and genetic and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.[1] Sklar is known for her large-scale gene discovery studies in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and for making some of the first statistically meaningful gene identifications in both mental illnesses.[2][3]

Education

Sklar completed her bachelor’s degree in classics and philosophy at St. John’s College in 1981. She went on to complete her medical degree and then her PhD in neuroscience, both at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Research

Sklar’s research and clinical work focus on characterizing the biology underlying mental illnesses, in particular schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Her studies of DNA variation have identified both common and rare genetic changes associated with these disorders.[4][5] While working at the Broad Institute, Sklar co-founded the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research and served as its genetics director. By studying thousands of affected individuals and comparing them with thousands of healthy people, she was the first to associate recurrent large deletions of DNA with the onset of schizophrenia and also found the first broadly reproducible genetic variants in schizophrenia as well as bipolar disorder using genome-wide association studies.[6][7][8][9] Sklar and her colleagues discovered a molecular basis for polygenicity in schizophrenia among both rare and common DNA alterations[10][11] and that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are genetically linked through DNA variants that contribute to both illnesses.[12][13] In 2011, Sklar joined the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and became founding chief of the Division of Psychiatric Genomics there.[14] The division’s scope includes stem cell biology, neurocognition, statistical genetics, and imaging approaches to elucidate the biological variation causing mental illness. While at Mount Sinai, Sklar published papers demonstrating that schizophrenia is linked to many ultra-rare genetic variants.[15][16] Sklar serves as a principal investigator for the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, the largest international collaboration in the psychiatric community.[17] She has helped lead the consortium’s working group on bipolar disorder. She also co-founded the International Schizophrenia Consortium.

Sklar edited the textbook Neurobiology of Mental Illness,[18] and has published more than 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

She was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2013.[19]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ Dr. Pamela Sklar, Psychiatrist in New York, NY | US News Doctors
  2. ↑ Studies show no smoking guns, or lots of them, in schizophrenia | BioWorld
  3. ↑ Gene-Hunters Find Hope and Hurdles in Schizophrenia Studies | New York Times
  4. ↑ Genome-wide Studies Identify 11 New Genetic Links to Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder | Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (Formerly NARSAD)
  5. ↑ Gene Hunt Hints at Cause of Bipolar Disorder | New York Times
  6. 1 2 Rare chromosomal deletions and duplications increase risk of schizophrenia | Nature
  7. 1 2 Large-scale genome-wide association analysis of bipolar disorder identifies a new susceptibility locus near ODZ4 | Nature
  8. 1 2 Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder | Nature
  9. 1 2 Collaborative genome-wide association analysis supports a role for ANK3 and CACNA1C in bipolar disorder | Nature
  10. ↑ The Maddening Genetics of Schizophrenia - Bio-IT World
  11. ↑ A polygenic burden of rare disruptive mutations in schizophrenia | Nature
  12. ↑ Genetic Links Seen Between Bipolar Illness and Schizophrenia
  13. ↑ Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be traced to the same genetic variants - The Globe and Mail
  14. ↑ Mount Sinai Welcomes Pamela Sklar, MD, PhD - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
  15. ↑ Schizophrenia’s Intricacies - The Scientist
  16. ↑ De novo mutations in schizophrenia implicate synaptic networks - Nature
  17. ↑ What is the PGC? — Psychiatric Genomics Consortium
  18. ↑ Neurobiology of Mental Illness - Dennis S. Charney; Joseph D. Buxbaum; Pamela Sklar; Eric J. Nestler - Oxford University Press
  19. ↑ Two Mount Sinai Physicians Elected To The Institute Of Medicine
  20. ↑ De novo mutations in schizophrenia implicate synaptic networks - Nature
  21. ↑ A polygenic burden of rare disruptive mutations in schizophrenia | Nature
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