The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium: Discoveries and Directions

The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) has fueled discoveries of common and rare genetic variation contributing to liability to 13 psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. This narrative review reflects on major findings from the past half decade of research by this international group of investigators in five priority areas: discovery of common variants using GWAS; rare variation and its interplay with polygenic risk; leveraging genetics to go beyond diagnostic boundaries; ascribing functional attributes to genomic discoveries; and developing and implementing processes for data sharing, outreach to various communities, and training. The insights gained in these domains frame the agenda for the next phase of PGC research. In addition to accelerating integrative common and rare variant-, within- and across-disorder findings for multiple psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, the next phase will elucidate genetic etiologies in multiple ancestral populations, leverage rapidly accumulating multi-modal functional genomics data to gain mechanistic understanding, and attempt to bring genetic findings to clinically actionable phenotypes, such as treatment response, and address the developmental unfolding of genetic risk.