David Mrazek, M.D.

Over the course of his career, Dr. David Mrazek has been interested in defining how genetic variation influences both vulnerability to psychopathology and response to treatment. For the past decade, Dr. Mrazek has led the Department of Psychiatry & Psychology at the Mayo Clinic and has worked in close collaboration with both the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology and the Department of Molecular Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics to better define the relationship between pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic gene variations and medication response.

Dr. Mrazek has worked closely with Dr. Richard Weinshilboum and has participated as a principal investigator in the Mayo Clinic/NIH Pharmacogenetics Research Network (PGRN) Center since 2005. He is also leading a related effort to define pharmacometabolomic markers associated with antidepressant response. More recently, he served as the principal investigator of an NIAAA P20 Developing Research Center grant titled, "The Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Treatment of Alcohol Dependence." The grant is designed to support the creation of a comprehensive research center to study pharmacogenomic influences on the treatment responses of drugs for alcohol use disorders.

Dr. Mrazek oversees the integration of the research conducted by investigators in the preclinical core and the clinical core of the P20 Developing Research Center. A major component of this effort is a large pharmacogenomic probe study of the use of acamprosate for the treatment of patients with severe alcohol use disorder. The goal of the center includes the systematic examination of genetic variability, which influences the treatment responses to other medications that are being used to treat craving and result in a decrease in the consumption of alcohol. Related to this interest, Dr. Mrazek is the sole author of the first textbook devoted to psychiatric pharmacogenomics, which was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press.