August 21, 2017
To Whom it may concern,
We would like to request continued access to the STAR*D: Treatment Resistant Depression dataset (Depression Distribution 2.0 & 3.0, study 18). We were previously granted access to this dataset with the goal of using a bioinformatic technique, genomic-relatedness-matrix restricted maximum-likelihood analysis (GREML), to estimate the aggregate effect of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on antidepressant treatment response.
This project is now complete, resulting in two publications. We used GREML to examine the SNP heritability of pretreatment depression severity and treatment response and the extent to which observed SNP heritability could be attributed to variation in the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems (Palmer, Beevers, McGeary, Brick & Knopik, 2016). Subsequently, we used GREML to investigate the extent to which variance in depression symptoms and symptom clusters could be explained by variation in common SNPs (Pearson, Palmer, Brick, McGeary, Knopik & Beevers, 2016; citations provided below).
We hope to have continued access to the STAR*D dataset for a novel project which aims to use machine learning models to predict anti-depressant treatment response using clinical predictors and genetic information. We have current NIMH funding for this project (R21MH110758) and we are eager to start these analyses.
This project includes Jason Shumake, Ph.D. as a Co-Investigator. Dr. Shumake is a research assistant professor and biostatistician for the Institute for Mental Health Research at the University of Texas at Austin. He has strong expertise in data analysis, including machine learning methods, randomized trials with longitudinal data, mediation analyses, structural equation analyses, and power analyses. He also has extensive experience managing and cleaning large, complex and multidimensional data. Dr. Shumake is the ideal biostatistician for this project and he will take the lead on the proposed data analyses.
I appreciate your consideration of our data access request. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional questions.
Sincerely,