The International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) has announced that Belinda Wang, MD, PhD, an assistant adjunct professor in the UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has received a Michael A. Jenike Young Investigator Award for her project titled Mapping OCD Genetic Risk to Brain Cell Types and Molecular Programs. This prestigious award will provide Wang up to $50,000 in funding as an early-career researcher pursuing innovative work to improve care for individuals with OCD), body dysmorphic disorder, body-focused repetitive behaviors, and hoarding disorder.
Wang is a child psychiatrist and clinician scientist at UCSF, where she treats children and adults with OCD and tic disorders. While there have been significant advances over the past decade in understanding the brain circuits involved in OCD, its molecular and cellular roots remain a near total mystery. Wang’s research uses human genetics as a starting point for uncovering that biology. In her recent collaborative study, she led analyses that identified 36 genes in which rare mutations can substantially increase the risk of OCD and tic disorders.
“Many of the patients I see continue to have substantial OCD symptoms even after treatment,” said Wang. “Our ability to design better treatments is hampered by how little we understand about what causes OCD. My work aims to define the molecular and cellular drivers of OCD and lay the foundation for treatments that target them.”
Wang emphasizes that the IOCDF award will support the next stage of her research, which focuses on integrating OCD genetic findings with detailed measurements of gene activity across hundreds of human brain cell types and networks assembled from studies of how genes interact. The findings will illustrate which cells and molecular processes to study next, an essential step toward explaining what goes wrong in the brain in OCD and, ultimately, toward more precise treatments.
Named in honor of renowned OCD researcher Michael Jenike, MD, the award is made possible by thousands of individual donors who share a commitment to expanding access to effective, evidence-based treatment.
“Research is essential to achieving our vision that everyone impacted by OCD and related disorders has immediate access to effective treatment and support,” said Rebecca Deusser, executive director of the IOCDF. “These grants help ensure that care is grounded in evidence, not guesswork—and that new discoveries can translate into real-world options for the people who need them.”
Founded in 1987, the International OCD Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to OCD and related disorders. Its donor-supported research grant program has awarded nearly $13 million in funding since 1994. Learn more at iocdf.org/research.
