Center for Biomarker Research & Precision Medicine

Our Mission

Our program aims to alleviate the tremendous personal, familial, and societal burden of mental illness and substance use disorders by using state-of-the-art technologies to identify molecular markers that can be used to develop new medications and tailor treatment to individual patients.

At a glance

Our research is guided by the ultimate aim of reducing the tremendous human suffering wrought by psychiatric and substance use disorders.

We capitalize on the rapid advances in genomic technologies that are revolutionizing biomedical research and will profoundly influence health care in the next decade.

We operate from a strong multidisciplinary perspective, blending advanced laboratory, computational, biological, pharmacological and statistical expertise.

Since its inception in 2006, our program has been awarded more than $23 million in research funding from mainly the National Institutes of Health.

We consider biomarkers critical to better understand what is causing disease, find new treatments, and improve disease management.

As developing a new drug takes many years, has a high risk of failure, and costs billions, we also focus on precision medicine that aims to improve treatment by tailor existing medications to individual patients.

Research

History

Karolina Aberg (PhD) and Edwin van den Oord (PhD)

Edwin van den Oord, Ph.D. Director and Professor

Founded the ’Center for Biomarker Research & Precision Medicine’ (BPM) at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006.

Karolina A. Aberg, Ph.D. Associate Director and Associate Professor

Associate Director and Associate Professor

The ability to innovate both at the laboratory and computational level has enabled us to submit unique and very competitive grant applications. Thus, since its inception in 2006, our program has been awarded >$23 million in grants from mainly the National Institutes of Health. The research environment we created has proved beneficial for students and post-docs who, in addition to obtaining advanced training, have been awarded career development (K) and research grants (R) from the National Institutes of Health as well as “young investigator” awards from various research foundations.

Our Team

News

Dr. Robin Chan awarded a prestigious 2019 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant
Dr. Robin F Chan was awarded a prestigious 2019 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant (Brain & Behavior Research Foundation)
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Local SMRT Grant from Pacific Biosciences for Dr. Robin Chan
Dr. Robin F Chan was awarded a Local SMRT Grant (Pacific Biosciences)
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Successes and Challenges in Precision Medicine in Psychiatry
Currently, considerable effort is devoted to finding novel drug targets. Problematically, the development of new medications is extremely expensive and takes many years.
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Multi-decade Study Finds Childhood Trauma is Common and Increases Health Risks in Adulthood
To better understand childhood trauma (e.g., witnessing violent events, abuse or neglect) we capitalized on a study that started at Duke University about 25 years ago…
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Biological age in individuals with depression or childhood trauma
The methylation of certain regions in our genome tends to change as we age. These age-sensitive methylation sites can be used to estimate someone’s biological age.
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New software for large scale methylation studies
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A cost-effective approach to study the entire brain methylome
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News

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