• MARTILIAS FARRELL

     

     

     

     

     

    Genetics

    Neuropharmacology

     

  • What I Do

    Martilias Farrell is a pharmacological and genetic neuroscientist. In his research he investigates the genetics of schizophrenia and the interaction of genetics, neuroscience, and pharmacology.

  • Research

    Martilias is currently a Research Assistant Professor working with Patrick Sullivan at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research is currently support by a K01 Career Development Award.

     

    Martilias is interested in combining genetics, neuroscience, and neuropharmacology to identify and develop novel treatment strategies for mental disorders. In his research, he aims to determine whether genetic screening can be used as a differential diagnosis for schizophrenia. For example, a case study recently published details an individual that had treatment resistant schizophrenia, but upon genomic screening was found to have both 22q11DS and Huntington disease.

     

    Schizophrenia is an idiopathic mental disorder. This effectively means that there is no known cause for schizophrenia, and therefore the diagnosis is one of exclusion. Martilias is interested in using genetics to aid in this exclusion, so that underlying genetic causes can be identified sooner and alternative treatment strategies considered. Additionally, he aims to leverage these findings towards therapeutic development. These disorders are often of single loci origin and are therefore amenable to conventional medical interventions and development. Finally, the unique biology associated with these genetic disorders may provide insight into the broader etiology of schizophrenia.

  • Publications

    Highlighted Publications

    Farrell MS, Lichtenstein M, Crowley JJ, Filmyer DM, Lázaro-Muñoz G, Shaughnessy RA, Mackenzie IR, Hirsch-Reinshagen V, Stowe R, Evans JP, Berg JS, Szatkiewicz J, Josiassen RC, Sullivan PF “Developmental delay, treatment-resistant psychosis, and early-onset dementia in a man with 22q11 deletion syndrome and Huntington’s Disease” American Journal of Psychiatry, In Press.

     

    Farrell MS, McCorvy JD, Huang XP, Urban DJ, White KL, Giguere PM, Doak AK, Bernstein AI, Stout KA, Park SM, Rodriguiz RM, Gray BW, Hyatt WS, Norwood AP, Webster KA, Gannon BM, Miller GW, Porter JH, Shoichet BK, Fantegrossi WE, Wetsel WC, Roth BL, “The in vitro and in vivo characterization of the alkaloid nuciferine” PLOS One, 2016. Link

     

    Farrell MS, Werge T, Sklar P, Owen MJ, Ophoff RA, O'Donovan MC, Corvin A, Cichon S, Sullivan PF, “Evaluating historical candidate genes for schizophrenia.” Molecular Psychiatry. 2015. Link

     

    Farrell MS, Pei Y, Wan Y, Yadav PN, Daigle TL, Urban DJ, Lee H, Sciaky N, Simmons A, Nonneman RJ, Huang XP, Hufeisen SJ, Guettier JM, Moy SS, Wess J, Caron MG, Calakos N, Roth BL, “A Gs DREADD Mouse for Selective Modulation of cAMP Production in Striatopallidal Neurons,” Neuropsychopharmacology. 2013 Link

     

    Farrell, MS, Roth, BL, “Pharmacosynthetics: Reimagining the pharmacogenetic approach,” Brain Research, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2012.09.043. Cited in the 2013 BRAIN Working Group Interim Report to the NIH director. Link

    All Publications

    Farrell MS, Lichtenstein M, Crowley JJ, Filmyer DM, Lázaro-Muñoz G, Shaughnessy RA, Mackenzie IR, Hirsch-Reinshagen V, Stowe R, Evans JP, Berg JS, Szatkiewicz J, Josiassen RC, Sullivan PF “Developmental delay, treatment-resistant psychosis, and early-onset dementia in a man with 22q11 deletion syndrome and Huntington’s Disease” American Journal of Psychiatry, In Press.

     

    Farrell MS, McCorvy JD, Huang XP, Urban DJ, White KL, Giguere PM, Doak AK, Bernstein AI, Stout KA, Park SM, Rodriguiz RM, Gray BW, Hyatt WS, Norwood AP, Webster KA, Gannon BM, Miller GW, Porter JH, Shoichet BK, Fantegrossi WE, Wetsel WC, Roth BL, “The in vitro and in vivo characterization of the alkaloid nuciferine” PLOS One, 2016.

     

    Sekar A, Bialas AR, de Rivera H, Davis A, Hammond TR, Kamitaki N, Tooley K, Presumey J, Baum M, Van Doren V, Genovese G, Rose SA, Handsaker RE; Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Daly MJ, Carroll MC, Stevens B, McCarroll SA. “Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component 4.” Nature. 2016.

     

    Huang XP, Karpiak J, Kroeze WK, Zhu H, Chen X, Moy SS, Saddoris KA, Nikolova V, Farrell MS, Wang S, Mangano TJ, Deshpande DA, Jiang A, Penn RB, Jin J, Koller BH, Kenakin T, Shoichet BK, Roth BL, “Allosteric ligands for the pharmacologically dark receptors GPR68 and GPR65” Nature. 2015

     

    Vilhjálmsson BJ, Yang J, Finucane HK, Gusev A, Lindström S, Ripke S, Genovese G, Loh PR, Bhatia G, Do R, Hayeck T, Won HH; Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Discovery, Biology, and Risk of Inherited Variants in Breast Cancer (DRIVE) study, Kathiresan S, Pato M, Pato C, Tamimi R, Stahl E, Zaitlen N, Pasaniuc B, Belbin G, Kenny EE, Schierup MH, De Jager P, Patsopoulos NA, McCarroll S, Daly M, Purcell S, Chasman D, Neale B, Goddard M, Visscher PM, Kraft P, Patterson N, Price AL. “Modeling Linkage Disequilibrium Increases Accuracy of Polygenic Risk Scores.” Am J Hum Genet. 2015

     

    Urban DJ, Zhu H, Marcinkiewcz C, Michaelides M, Oshibuchi H, Rhea D, Aryal D, Farrell MS, Lowery-Gionta E, Olsen R, Wetsel W, Kash T, Hurd Y, Tecott L, Roth BL, “Elucidation of the behavioral program and neuronal network encoded by dorsal raphe serotonergic neurons” Neuropsychopharmacology. 2015. Link

     

    Farrell MS, Werge T, Sklar P, Owen MJ, Ophoff RA, O'Donovan MC, Corvin A, Cichon S, Sullivan PF, “Evaluating historical candidate genes for schizophrenia.” Molecular Psychiatry. 2015.

     

    Bulik-Sullivan BK, Loh PR, Finucane HK, Ripke S, Yang J; Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Patterson N, Daly MJ, Price AL, Neale BM, “LD Score regression distinguishes confounding from polygenicity in genome-wide association studies.” Nature Genetics. 2015.

     

    Crowley JJ, Collins AL, Lee RJ, Nonneman RJ, Farrell MS, Ancalade N, Mugford JW, Agster KL, Nikolova VD, Moy SS, Sullivan PF, “Disruption of the microRNA 137 primary transcript results in early embryonic lethality in mice.” Biological Psychiatry. 2015.

     

    Gusev A, Lee SH, Trynka G, Finucane H, Vilhjálmsson BJ, Xu H, Zang C, Ripke S, Bulik-Sullivan B, Stahl E; Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium; SWE-SCZ Consortium, Kähler AK, Hultman CM, Purcell SM, McCarroll SA, Daly M, Pasaniuc B, Sullivan PF, Neale BM, Wray NR, Raychaudhuri S, Price AL; Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium; SWE-SCZ Consortium. “Partitioning heritability of regulatory and cell-type-specific variants across 11 common diseases.” Am J Hum Genet. 2014.

     

    Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. “Biological insights from 108 schizophrenia-associated genetic loci.” Nature. 2014.

     

    McElligott ZA, Fox ME, Walsh PL, Urban DJ, Farrell MS, Roth BL, Wightman RM, “Noradrenergic synaptic function in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis varies in animal models of anxiety and addiction,” Neuropsychopharmacology. 2013

     

    Farrell MS, Pei Y, Wan Y, Yadav PN, Daigle TL, Urban DJ, Lee H, Sciaky N, Simmons A, Nonneman RJ, Huang XP, Hufeisen SJ, Guettier JM, Moy SS, Wess J, Caron MG, Calakos N, Roth BL, “A Gs DREADD Mouse for Selective Modulation of cAMP Production in Striatopallidal Neurons,” Neuropsychopharmacology. 2013

     

    Farrell, MS, Roth, BL, “Pharmacosynthetics: Reimagining the pharmacogenetic approach,” Brain Research, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2012.09.043. Cited in the 2013 BRAIN Working Group Interim Report to the NIH director.

     

    Farrell MS, “Using DREADDs to Isolate Internal Clocks,” Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. 2011

     

    Yadav PN, Kroeze WK, Farrell MS, Roth BL, “Antagonist Functional Selectivity: 5-HT2A Serotonin Receptor Antagonists Differentially Regulate 5-HT2A Receptor Protein Level In Vivo,” J Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 2011

     

    Allen JA, Yadav PN, Setola V, Farrell MS, Roth BL, “Schizophrenia risk gene CAV1 is both pro-psychotic and required for atypical antipsychotic drug actions in vivo,” Translational Psychiatry. 2011

     

    Yadav PN, Abbas AI, Farrell MS, Setola V, Sciaky N, Huang XP, Kroeze WK, Crawford LK, Piel DA, Keiser MJ, Irwin JJ, Shoichet BK, Deneris ES, Gingrich J, Beck SG, Roth BL, “The Presynaptic component of the serotonergic system is required for clozapine’s efficacy,” Neuropsychopharmacology. 2011

     

    Dong S, Allen JA, Farrell MS, Roth BL, “A chemical-genetic approach for precise spatiotemporal control of cellular signaling,” Mol Biosyst. 2010.

     

    Abbas AI, Urban DJ, Jensen NH, Farrell MS, Kroeze WK, Mieczkowski P, Wang Z, Roth BL, “Assessing serotonin receptor mRNA editing frequency by a novel ultra high-throughput sequencing method,” Nucleic Acids Research. 2010.

     

    Farrell MS and Roth BL: “Allosteric antipsychotics: M4 muscarinic potentiators as novel treatments for schizophrenia,” Neuropsychopharmacology. 2010

     

    Farrell MS, Rosenzweig-Lipson S, Walker EA: “Discriminative stimulus effects of serotonin agonists, neutral antagonists, and inverse agonists in pigeons: Perspectives on intrinsic efficacy measurements in vivo,” Psychopharmacology. 2010

     

    Farrell MS, Gilmore K, Raffa RB, Walker EA: “Behavioral characterization of serotonergic activation in the flatworm Planaria,” Behavioural Pharmacology. 2008.

     

    De Rosa M, Arnold D, Blythe E, Farrell MS, Seals T, Wills K, Medved M, “Effect of electron-withdrawing substituents on the inverse-electron demand Diels-Alder reaction of 2-aminopyrroles and 1,3,5-triazines,” Heterocycl. Commun. 2007

     

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