SearchDecoding the Brain, One Cell at a Time
No two brains are wired the same way, and no two patients respond to the same medication the same way. We study why individuals diverge in their response to the same neurological conditions or treatments. Using high-resolution multi-omics tools, we examine the genetic and molecular activity of thousands of individual cells at once to understand what makes a brain resilient or susceptible to disease.
Our work is rooted in clinical partnership. Through collaboration with investigators at the Nathan Kline Institute (NKI) and NYU Grossman School of Medicine, we ensure that our research at the bench reflects the challenges clinicians encounter in their patients.
Research Pillars
Methodological Rigor: The Bench and the Server
Good science requires reliable tools. We do not just use existing technology; we refine it. We invest in wet-lab technology development and benchmarking, with particular focus on optimizing single-cell, spatial, and epigenomic workflows for archived and complex human tissues. On the computational side, we adapt and refine workflows to identify which cellular “states” statistically covary with clinical severity and longitudinal clinical metadata. This rigor ensures that our high-dimensional data produces reproducible biological insights.
TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
Multi-Tissue Systems Biology
Neuropsychiatric pathology is a systemic phenomenon that extends beyond the brain. We profile molecular changes across human brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and peripheral blood to track disease across biological compartments. By viewing the same disease through multiple vantage points, some accessible only post-mortem and others via longitudinal clinical sampling, we map the transition states of disease progression and treatment response. We use single-cell “ground truth” data to deconvolve bulk clinical samples (like blood or CSF), allowing us to estimate cellular changes in living patients over time. Our previous work demonstrated that fluoxetine acts across 27 brain regions, triggering a global shift in energy metabolism and region-specific chromatin remodeling.
CROSS-COMPARTMENT PROFILING
Regulatory Logic of Inter-Individual Variation
Why does a treatment that works for one patient fail for another? We look for the answer in our unique genetic blueprints. We hypothesize that molecular heterogeneity between patients who share the same diagnosis (e.g., Major Depressive Disorder) drives divergent treatment outcomes. Using spatial and single-cell resolution, we map how cell-type composition and gene regulatory states vary across individuals. By integrating these data with risk variants and maps of promoter-distal enhancers, we aim to uncover the regulatory logic of vulnerability and move antidepressant selection toward a molecularly informed model. Anchoring our multi-omic maps to known patient outcomes, we push beyond descriptive biology toward building models that can predict an individual’s likelihood of antidepressant response based on their baseline molecular profile.
PRECISION PSYCHIATRY
Our Vision
From Atlas to Action
By generating high-resolution molecular profiles across human brain, blood, CSF, cell lines, and animal models, and linking them to clinical outcomes, we aim to transform how we understand and treat neurological and psychiatric conditions. Our work sits at the intersection of technology development, large-scale collaborative science, and translational neuroscience.
Join the Lab
Our goal is to support trainees and researchers in becoming bilingual: fluent in both robust molecular wet-lab methodologies and high-dimensional computational analysis. By integrating these domains, we bridge the gap between the laboratory, the data, and the clinic. If you are interested in applying multiscale omics to the frontiers of neuropsychiatry, we would be glad to hear from you.
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