Pitt Psychiatry Awarded $6M Baszucki Group Grant to Study the Therapeutic Effect of the Ketogenic Diet in Bipolar Disorder
A team of investigators led by Mary Phillips, MD, MD (Cantab) (Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Clinical and Translational Science, and Bioengineering, and Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders), have received a Baszucki Group grant to support their new center, “Elucidating Neurobiological Mechanisms Underlying the Therapeutic Effect of the Ketogenic Diet in Bipolar Disorder (BD): A Multidisciplinary Mechanistic Study.” Baszucki Group’s mission is to transform mental health outcomes, beginning with bipolar disorder, by supporting initiatives at the intersection of metabolism, psychiatry, and neuroscience.
The study unites leaders in clinical affective neuroscience and neuroimaging, mitochondrial biology and patient-derived cellular models, and molecular biology and animal models.
Dr. Phillips is internationally recognized for her work on the functional and structural abnormalities in the human brain’s emotion processing, reward processing and emotional regulation circuits that are associated with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The center’s investigators include:
Zachary Freyberg, MD, PhD – Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Cell Biology, University of Pittsburgh (expertise in mitochondrial biology and patient-derived cellular models)
Colleen McClung, PhD – Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science, University of Pittsburgh (expertise in molecular biology and animal models)
Ana Cristina Andreazza, PhD – Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Psychiatry, University of Toronto (expertise in mitochondrial biology and patient-derived cellular models)
The study aims to substantially improve our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effect of a ketogenic diet by elucidating for the first time the inter-relationships among changes in gene expression, mitochondrial function, and neurotransmitter and neural network markers that are associated with improvement in mania/hypomania in bipolar disorder. In so doing, the project will identify new genetic, metabolic, molecular and neural network markers to guide personalized interventions and provide targets for novel treatment developments for individuals with bipolar disorder.