Dr. John Kelsoe

 

 

John R. Kelsoe, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA  92093-0603
Phone #: 858-534-5927
FAX #: 858-534-5527
E-mail: jkelsoe@ucsd.edu
Web site: http://psychgenes.ucsd.edu

Biography
Dr. Kelsoe graduated from medical school at the University of Alabama, Birmingham in 1981. He completed internship training at Washington University in St. Louis and psychiatry residency at UCSD. He then went to the National Insititue of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland for 4 years and returned to San Diego to join the Dept. of Psychiatry faculty in 1989.

Research Focus
Dr. Kelsoe’s longstanding research focus has been the genetics of psychiatric illness, bipolar disorder in particular. Over the past 15 years, his work has been focused on using a variety of molecular genetic methods to identify the specific genes that predispose to bipolar disorder. He has pursued this primarily by using positional cloning methods such as linkage and association in families in which the illness is genetically transmitted. He has also employed animal models of bipolar disorder in order to identify possible candidate genes that can then be tested in clinical populations. This approach has led to the recent identification of the gene for G protein receptor kinase 3 (GRK3) as a likely gene for bipolar disorder on chromosome 22.

Clinical Focus
Dr. Kelsoe’s primary clinical focus is the treatment of refractory mood disorders. He is the Medical Director of the STEP Clinic at the VA Hospital where they specialize in the treatment of chronic and refractory mood disorders. Patients at this clinic receive a thorough diagnostic evaluation and are eligible to participate in longitudinal research studies of the ability of genes to predict course, outcome, and treatment response.

Selected Publications


 

University of California, San Diego, Department of Psychiatry, 9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0603 La Jolla, CA 92037-0603
Telephone: (858) 534-3684, Fax: (858) 534-7653, Electronic Mail: psychiatry@ucsd.edu