Development of Systems and Precision Medicine - Take Mood Disorder as an Example.

Precision medicine is to achieve individual optimal health care, given the biological mechanisms, genetic variants, and environmental measurements. Take mood disorder (MD) as an example, we aim to develop systems and precision medicine in Taiwanese population. MD is a very serious and dysfunctional mental disorder. Since MD patients with treatment have high risk of neurocognitive impairment and metabolic disturbances, the therapeutic strategies are of clinical importance. Individual difference of treatment outcome in MD patients would result from genetic variants, environmental factors, and their interactions. Also, the treatment outcome of MD contains multiple dimensions, including improvement of disease severity, neurocognitive function, and optimized medication strategy. However, comprehensive development of approaches to investigate the multiple dimensions of treatment outcome in MD patients is limited. In this three-year proposal, we explore the interactions of genetic variants and environmental factors (represented by psychosocial stress and gut microbiota) driven approaches to develop precision medicine.