Translating GWAS Findings Into Therapies For Depression And Anxiety Disorders: Drug Repositioning Using Gene-Set Analyses Reveals Enrichment Of Psychiatric Drug Classes

作者：Hon‐Cheong So, Alexandria Lau, Carlos Kwan‐Long Chau, Sze‐Yung Wong · 发表于：bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1101/132563 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Genetic Associations and Epidemiology、Tryptophan and brain disorders、Mental Health Research Topics

Abstract Depression and anxiety disorders are the first and sixth leading cause of disability worldwide according to latest reports from the World Health Organization. Despite their high prevalence and the significant disability resulted, there are limited advances in new drug development. On the other hand, the advent of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has greatly improved our understanding of the genetic basis underlying psychiatric disorders. In this work we employed gene-set analyses of GWAS summary statistics for drug repositioning. We explored five related GWAS datasets, including two on major depressive disorder (MDD-PGC and MDD-CONVERGE, with the latter focusing on severe melancholic depression), one on anxiety disorders, and two on depressive symptoms and neuroticism in the population. We extracted gene-sets associated with each drug from DSigDB and examined their association with each GWAS phenotype. We also performed repositioning analyses on meta-analyzed GWAS data, integrating evidence from all related phenotypes. Importantly, we showed that the repositioning hits are generally enriched for known psychiatric medications or those considered in clinical trials, except for MDD-PGC. Enrichment was seen for antidepressants and anxiolytics but also for antipsychotics. We also revealed new candidates or drug classes for repositioning, some of which were supported by experimental or clinical studies. For example, the top repositioning hit using meta-analyzed p-val...