PUMAS

About PUMAS

The Populations Underrepresented in Mental illness Association Studies (PUMAS) Project, is a recently formed international collaboration of investigators from the US, South America and Africa which aims to collect samples from 17,000 individuals with severe mental illness from across Africa and the Americas to create a total sample dataset from 183,000 participants. We will generate and analyze whole genome sequencing data on 40,000 schizophrenia patients, 40,000 bipolar patients and 40,000 controls to learn the similarities and differences of the genetic architecture of severe mental illness across diverse ancestries and environments.

U01 awarded by the NIMH to the Broad Institute, Harvard, SUNY Downstate and UCLA. PUMAS is part the Ancestral Populations Network, a network established by NIMH in 2020 to work toward global mental health equity.