Investigator
Falk
Lohoff,
M.D.
Section on Clinical Genomics and Experimental Therapeutics
Dr. Falk Lohoff serves as the Chief of the Section on Clinical Genomics and Experimental Therapeutics (CGET). He received his medical degree from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2002, and completed residency training in psychiatry and a fellowship in neuropsychopharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is board certified in Psychiatry since 2007. He was Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania from 2007-2014, after which he joined the NIH intramural program as a Lasker Clinical Research Scholar. Dr. Lohoff has worked on clinical trials in mood and anxiety disorders and has also been involved in direct patient care as the attending at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is focused on translational medicine and spans areas of molecular genetics, epigenetics, imaging-genetics, pharmacogenetics and clinical experimental trials.
Our section conducts pre-clinical studies and translational clinical studies with focus on genomics and epigenetics related to the pathophysiology and treatment of alcohol use disorders and addictions. The pre-clinical work focuses on identifying molecular mechanisms involved in addictions, utilizing a wide array of methods including human population genetics, genome wide genotyping approaches, next-generation DNA and RNA sequencing and epigenetic/proteomic profiling. Findings are translated into human clinical studies using molecular biomarker, pharmacogenetic, epigenetic and functional imaging genetic approaches. Clinical studies include early phase 1 / phase 2 proof-of-concept studies of experimental novel therapeutics guided by molecular biomarker profiling.
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1) Lohoff FW, Sorcher JL, Rosen AD, Mauro KL, Fanelli RR, Momenan R, Hodgkinson CA, Vendruscolo LF, Koob GF, Schwandt M, George DT, Jones IS, Holmes A, Zhou Z, Xu MJ, Gao B, Sun H, Phillips MJ, Muench C, Kaminsky ZA (2017)
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Methylomic profiling and replication implicates deregulation of PCSK9 in alcohol use disorder
- Mol Psychiatry
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2) Jung J, Tawa EA, Muench C, Rosen AD, Rickels K, Lohoff FW (2017)
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Genome-wide association study of treatment response to venlafaxine XR in generalized anxiety disorder
- Psychiatry Res, 254, 8-11
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3) Dutta N, Helton SG, Schwandt M, Zhu X, Momenan R, Lohoff FW (2016)
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Genetic Variation in the Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 1 (VMAT1/SLC18A1) Gene and Alcohol Withdrawal Severity
- Alcohol Clin Exp Res, 40(3), 474-81
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4) Zhu X, Dutta N, Helton SG, Schwandt M, Yan J, Hodgkinson CA, Cortes CR, Kerich M, Hall S, Sun H, Phillips M, Momenan R, Lohoff FW (2015)
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Resting-state functional connectivity and presynaptic monoamine signaling in Alcohol Dependence.
- Hum Brain Mapp, 36(12), 4808-18
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5) Lohoff FW, Hodge R, Narasimhan S, Nall A, Ferraro TN, Mickey BJ, Heitzeg MM, Langenecker SA, Zubieta JK, Bogdan R, Nikolova YS, Drabant E, Hariri AR, Bevilacqua L, Goldman D, Doyle GA (2014)
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Functional genetic variants in the vesicular monoamine transporter 1 modulate emotion processing
- Mol Psychiatry, 19(1), 129-39
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