# A Latin American biobank for large-scale genetics research on severe mental illness

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2021 · $1,983,275

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
This proposed project will develop and make available to the scientific community the Latin American Biobank
of Severe Mental Illness (LAB-SMI). This resource, a databank and biobank (including DNA samples and both
phenotypic and genotypic data) for 50,000 individuals affected with SMI together with an equal number of
controls matched to the cases by age, gender, and geographical location will constitute a major step in reversing
the underrepresentation of Latin American populations in psychiatric genetics research. All of the participants
will be members of the “Paisa”, a genetically and culturally homogenous population that is the predominant ethnic
group in a region of Colombia (CO) that is home to ~9M people. Cases will consist of individuals affected with
psychotic or mood disorders who will be ascertained, agnostic to diagnosis, through the electronic medical
records (EMR) of five large psychiatric hospitals in the “Paisa region”. Controls will be individuals without a history
of an SMI diagnosis who will be ascertained through the databases of SURA, one of the largest providers of
primary care services in this region. By extracting a wide range of information from the EMR, using methods
developed in an existing investigation of SMI in a single Paisa-region hospital, the project team will record lifetime
designations of an SMI diagnosis and the presence or absence of SMI-related symptoms (such as delusions)
and behaviors (such as suicide attempt). It is hypothesized that these phenotypic features may share genetic
causation that transcends diagnostic categories. SNP genotyping and whole exome sequencing studies of the
entire 100K LAB-SMI will be well powered to identify novel associations across the allele frequency spectrum for
SMI diagnoses, symptoms, and behaviors, and to help identify the causal variation responsible for previously
discovered associations. Additionally, the project will use the LAB-SMI databank to explore the architecture of
SMI phenotypes. Specifically, it will investigate the genetic basis of different disease trajectories, and mine the
full set of phenotype data for association with loci shown previously (through this project or others) to contribute
to SMI diagnoses, symptoms, or behaviors.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10149414
- **Project number:** 5R01MH123157-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** NELSON B. FREIMER
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $1,983,275
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-05-01 → 2025-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10149414

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10149414, A Latin American biobank for large-scale genetics research on severe mental illness (5R01MH123157-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10149414. Licensed CC0.

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