Rate My Professor Gerome Breen

Professor Gerome Breen PhD is Professor of Psychiatric Genetics in the Department of Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London. As a psychiatric geneticist, he specializes in the genetics of affective (mood) disorders, psychosis, and eating disorders. His research seeks to identify the biological underpinnings of common psychiatric disorders to facilitate improved drug discovery, biomarker studies, predictions of response to psychological treatments, and enhanced clinical trial designs. Genetics provides a stable approach since DNA sequences remain unchanged post-diagnosis or treatment. Breen plays a pivotal role in international genetic consortia, including the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), where he chairs the Anorexia and Eating Disorders group alongside Cindy Bulik and contributes to the Network and Pathway Analysis group. These efforts have led to the discovery of more than 500 genetic variants for common psychiatric disorders. He organizes the annual PGC Industry meeting "Pathways to Drugs" to bridge geneticists with pharmaceutical and biotech sectors for psychiatric drug development.

Breen leads the NIHR Maudsley BioResource, part of the NIHR BioResource and King's College London Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, serving as a biobank for psychiatric and neurological research. He co-leads the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) study with Professor Thalia Eley and directs the Eating Disorders Genetic Initiative (EDGI), aiming to recruit 10,000 individuals in England for genetic analyses. The NIHR Mental Health BioResource, under his leadership, targets over 100,000 participants, with GLAD and EDGI as initial studies. His key publications include "Genome-wide meta-analysis of quantitatively measured generalized anxiety symptoms in individuals of European ancestry" (2026, Nature Human Behaviour), "Isolating the Genetic Component of Mania in Bipolar Disorder" (2026, Biological Psychiatry), "Splitting Schizophrenia: Divergent Cognitive and Educational Outcomes Revealed by Genomic Structural Equation Modelling" (2026, Molecular Psychiatry), and "Agreeing a set of biopsychosocial variables for collection across the UK Eating Disorders Clinical Research Network (EDCRN): A consensus study using adapted nominal group technique" (2025, BMJ Mental Health). With extensive involvement in funded projects from MRC, NIHR, and Wellcome Trust, Breen delivered his inaugural lecture at IoPPN in 2024, titled "A Geneticist's Guide to the Galaxy of Mental Health."