Welcome to the Immunopsychiatry Research Group

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About Us

The immunopsychiatry research group is based at the University of Bristol within the  Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit  and the  Centre for Academic Mental Health.  The group investigates the role of inflammation in psychiatric disorders, neurodevelopment, cognition, and in physical and psychiatric multimorbidity across the life course using population data, genetics, and early-phase clinical trials. The aim of our work is to identify and validate novel immunological mechanisms and treatment options for psychiatric disorders, with a focus on depression and schizophrenia. This work is clinically important because depression and schizophrenia affect one in four people in their lifetime, but one in three people affected by these illnesses do not respond to currently available treatments.

The group is led by Golam Khandaker, Professor of Psychiatry at Bristol Medical School, Head of Translational Mental Health Programme at the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust.

We are happy to hear from people interested in mental health research including prospective students, staff, collaborators, study participants, the media, and people with lived experience of mental illness.



Our Research

The immunopsychiatry research group investigates the role of inflammation (e.g., immune proteins, cells, genes) in psychiatric disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, multimorbidity, and cognition using cutting-edge genetic (e.g., Mendelian randomization, genetic colocalization) and non-genetic methods (e.g., trajectory based modelling, machine learning) applied to large-scale psychiatric, genomic and immunological data, as well as clinical trials of immunotherapy for people with depression and psychosis.  The aim of this work is to identify and validate immunological causal mechanisms and treatment targets for psychiatric disorders to help develop new treatment and biology-based classification/subtyping of psychiatric conditions. 

All Research Projects

  







Immunopsychaitry Research Group

Featured News


Depression linked to immune response in some people

March 1, 2023

A link between depression and changes in counts of several types of immune cells in the blood has been revealed by researchers at the University of Bristols MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit. 
 


Anti-inflammatory drugs might someday treat depression

October 18, 2016

In the future, a new class of anti-inflammatory drugs could be used to treat depression, say University of Cambridge researchers.
 

A New Key to Understanding Depression

August 14, 2014

Scientists are studying alternative explanations for complicated conditions like depression, and researchers from the University of Cambridge are...

The Team

InPsych is a research group with bright ideas and talented staff. We welcome queries from prospective PhD students, staff and interns. To find out more about group members click below.

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Publication

Notable publications from the InPsych group have appeared in JAMA Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry and The Lancet Psychiatry.

 

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Collaborations

The InPsych group has longstanding collaborations with researchers in the UK, rest of Europe and USA, and with population-based cohorts from the UK and abroad.
 

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Contact Us

We are happy to hear from prospective group members, research collaborators, participants, media, patients and others. Email: info@immunopsychiatry.com

Our address

Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit
University of Bristol
Oakfield House
Oakfield Grove
Bristol
BS8 2BN
United Kingdom

 
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