Hussman Institute for Human Genomics

HIHG Centers : Therapeutic Innovation

The Center for Therapeutic Innovation

The Center for Therapeutic Innovation at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics is dedicated to spanning the many disciplines of medical research to find novel treatments for a wide range of diseases and conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, depression, addiction, Parkinson’s and macular degeneration.

Directed by Claes Wahlestedt, M.D., Ph.D., an internationally recognized researcher of innovative drug therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders and epigenetics, this newest addition to the HIHG’s formidable group of investigative centers represents one of the strongest collections of epigenetics researchers in the nation.

At a time when the development of new drugs to fight disorders of the brain is in high demand but productivity is low, the Center’s mission is to use genetic and epigenetic tools to identify targets and discover the new pharmaceutical compounds that can protect the most vulnerable patients from these dreadful illnesses. In addition to basic research, the Center has a goal of engaging a wide number of researchers across disparate fields like neuroscience and cancer research to trade ideas and perhaps realize new breakthroughs. Simply put, the key is to combine breakthroughs in genetics and drug discovery to attack neuropsychiatric and other disorders, aiming for their Achilles’ heel.

At the center of all of this research is the relatively new field of epigenetics, the study of the myriad of chemical reactions in the human body that switch parts of the genome off and on at strategic times and locations. This complex activity is governed by the cellular material – the epigenome – that sits on top of the genome, just outside it (the prefix epi- means above). It is these epigenetic “marks” that tell your genes to either subtly or rapidly switch on or off. It is through epigenetic marks that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that is passed from one generation to the next.