Predicting treatment response

Antidepressants have proved to be particularly important in the treatment of MDD, yet there is still no way to predict accurately how patients are likely to respond to them; instead it usually takes up to 4 weeks before the efficacy of a prescribed antidepressant can be known. Pharmacological treatment of depression therefore remains largely a matter of trial and error.

The primary aim of this project is to determine which combinations of markers at baseline predict drug treatment response in homogeneous subtypes of MDD and whether certain markers are specific to a MDD subgroup.

These aims could not be realized without explicit involvement from Brain Resource (www.brainresource.com), an industry partner of the Brain Dynamics Centre, given the need to recruit a large number of participants so that multiple homogeneous depressed subtypes may be recruited and compared directly.

We have recently published a peer-reviewed review article which provides a theoretical rationale for this project:

Kemp, A.H., Gordon, E., Rush, A.J., Williams, L.M., (2008). Improving the prediction of Treatment response in depression: Integration of clinical, cognitive, psychophysiological, neuroimaging and genetic measures. CNS Spectrums, 13(12):1066-1086 

This review is available for free at: http://www.cnsspectrums.com/aspx/articledetail.aspx?articleid=1913

This project relates to:

• International Study to Predict Optimized Treatment - in Depression (iSPOT-D)
  
• NHMRC Industry Career Development Award (Application: 571101, 2009-2012), a research fellowship awarded to Dr Kemp
  
• NHMRC Project Grant (Application: 464863, 2007-2009), awarded to Dr Kemp
  
• NHMRC Australian Biomedical (Peter Doherty) Fellowship (Application: 358770, 2005 – 2009), a research fellowship awarded to Dr Kemp  
  
• GlaxoSmithKline Australia Post Graduate Support Grant (2008-2009), awarded to Dr Kemp 
  

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