Synaptic Pathway Genetic Analysis of Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia: Insights from a Novel Hong Kong Cohort and European Consortium Replication

This study is a cross-ancestry investigation which leverages genetic data from both East Asian (Hong Kong clinical cohort) and European ancestry (Schizophrenia Treatment Resistance and Therapeutic Advances (STRATA) Consortium, led by Prof. James MacCabe at King’s College London). It aims to explore how individuals with treatment-resistant schizophrenia (with clozapine prescription as proxy) may differ genetically from those who are treatment-responsive, focusing on genetic signals related to expert-curated publicly available synaptic pathways. The seminar will cover commonly used genetic analysis techniques including polygenic risk scores (PRS), transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS), and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), with a discussion on their usages and limitations.