New “drugs and targets” in the GWAS era of bipolar disorder

Abstract

ObjectiveDue to the phenotypic heterogeneity and etiological complexity of bipolar disorder (BD), many patients do not respond well to the current medications, and developing novel effective treatment is necessary. Whether any BD genome‐wide association study (GWAS) risk genes were targets of existing drugs or novel drugs that can be repurposed in the clinical treatment of BD is a hot topic in the GWAS era of BD.MethodsA list of 425 protein‐coding BD risk genes was distilled through the BD GWAS, and 4479 protein‐coding druggable targets were retrieved from the druggable genome. The overlapped genes/targets were subjected to further analyses in DrugBank, Pharos, and DGIdb datasets in terms of their FDA status, mechanism of action and primary indication, to identify their potential for repurposing.ResultsWe identified 58 BD GWAS risk genes grouped as the druggable targets, and several genes were given higher priority. These BD risk genes were targets of antipsychotics, antidepressants, antiepileptics, calcium channel antagonists, as well as anxiolytics and analgesics, either existing clinically‐approved drugs for BD or the drugs than can be repurposed for treatment of BD in the future. Those genes were also likely relevant to BD pathophysiology, as many of them encode ion channel, ion transporter or neurotransmitter receptor, or the mice manipulating those genes are likely to mimic the phenotypes manifest in BD patients.ConclusionsThis study identifies several targets that may facilitate the discovery of novel treatments in BD, and implies the value of conducting GWAS into clinical translation.