Dr. Rakesh Karmacharya is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Principal Investigator in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine. He is a faculty member in the Harvard Chemical Biology graduate program and the Program in Neuroscience and is also an Associate Member in the Chemical Biology Program at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, faculty member in the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Medical Director of the OnTrack Program for First-Episode Psychosis at McLean Hospital.
Dr. Karmacharya received an A.B. in Biochemistry from Harvard University, an M.S. in Molecular Biophysics from Yale University and an MD and a PhD in Biophysics from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His graduate studies focused on theoretical studies of the quantum mechanics of proton tunneling in condensed phase. He completed an internship in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a residency in psychiatry at MGH and McLean Hospital, where he served as the Chief Resident of the Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Program. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in chemical biology at Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
Dr. Karmacharya runs a research laboratory focused on chemical biology approaches using stem cells to investigate the cellular and molecular underpinnings of psychiatric neurobiology. He is a recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar award, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist award and the BRAINS award from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Mass General Psychiatry: Adult Outpatient Psychiatry Services
55 Fruit St.
Wang Ambulatory Care Center
Boston, MA 02114
Phone: 617-724-7792
Medical Education
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Dr. Karmacharya and his team are applying chemical biology approaches to identify "disease signatures" for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, using neuronal cells generated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The goal is to find reliable and robust cellular features that segregate with disease than can serve as disease signatures. The identification of disease signatures will enable screens of small molecule libraries to delineate molecular targets that modulate these disease signatures and identify new diagnostic and therapeutic leads for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
