Anil Malhotra

Dr. Anil Malhotra is the Director of Psychiatry Research at the Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, NY, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) in the Bronx, NY, and an Investigator at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, NY. Dr. Malhotra’s research group currently focuses on identifying the biological underpinnings of schizophrenia and the mechanism of action of antipsychotic drugs. His group has identified a number of genes associated with increased risk for the disorder, determined their relationship with important clinical manifestations of illness, including cognitive impairment, and examined the role of genetic factors in predicting individual responses to pharmacological treatment. His group published the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of schizophrenia, using new technology assessing hundreds of thousands of markers across the genome, as well as developed a new analytic strategy to assess the data. Moreover, a recent project provides new evidence for a role of specific genetic factors in vulnerability to antipsychotic drug-induced weight gain, a common yet potentially serious side effect of treatment.

Dr. Malhotra is Principal Investigator of Grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), NARSAD, and industry. He is a frequent speaker at international and national meetings, as well as giving numerous Grand Rounds presentations at academic institutions across the U.S. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of seven medical and scientific journals, participates in NIH study sections, and serves as the Program Chair for the only annual meeting dedicated to pharmacogenetics in psychiatry.

Dr. Malhotra completed his undergraduate studies at Cornell University in 1985 and received his MD from Wake Forest University in 1989. After residency training in psychiatry at Georgetown University, he completed a research fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He developed a research program in pharmacogenetics at the NIMH where he was appointed as the Chief of the Unit of Pharmacogenetics in the Experimental Therapeutics Branch. In 1998, Dr. Malhotra moved to the Zucker Hillside Hospital and developed an internationally recognized molecular genetics program focused on the major neuropsychiatric disorders.