Dr. Julio Licinio, MD

Julio Licinio, M.D., is Miller Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Medicine & Endocrinology at the University of Miami Health System/Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. He is also the institution's associate dean for project strategy and the director and principal investigator of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grant process.

Dr. Licinio completed his training in internal medicine at the University of Sao Paulo Medical Center in Brazil. He came to the United States in 1984, and was trained in medicine-endocrinology at the University of Chicago, in psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and in molecular neurobiology at the National Institute of Mental Health.

His translational work on the endocrine and pharmacogenomic mechanisms at the interface of obesity and depression has been funded by five NIH Institutes (NIGMS, NHGRI, NCRR, NIDDK, NHLBI, NARSAD) and by private foundations, such as …Stanley Foundation, Dana Foundation, PhRMA Foundation, and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. His findings have been extensively replicated and cited in the scientific literature. Dr. Licinio directs a joint industry-NIH effort that was responsible for the first successful hormonal treatment of a genetic form of obesity in adults, and he conducts studies on the pharmacogenomics of antidepressant treatment response in Hispanics.

Dr. Licinio, who has more than 200 scientific publications and two patents, has served as Director of the UCLA Semel Institute Center for Pharmacogenomics and Clinical Pharmacology, and Associate Program Director of the UCLA General Clinical Research Center, Founding Director of the UCLA Graduate Training Program in Translational and Clinical Investigation, the UCLA Mentored Clinical Pharmacology Research Scholars Program, and the UCLA Center of Excellence in Clinical Pharmacology.

Dr. Licinio is President of the International Society of Pharmacogenomics, a member of the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretarys Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society and of two NIH Study Sections. He is founding editor of the journals Molecular Psychiatry and The Pharmacogenomics Journal, both published by the Nature Publishing Group.

Along with his wife and collaborator, Ma-Li Wong, M.D., Dr. Licinio is editor of "Pharmacogenomics: The Search for Individualized Therapies" (Wiley-VCH, 2002), which was the first book on its topic. Dr. Licinio and Dr. Wong's latest textbook, the multi-authored two-volume textbook "Biology of Depression: From Novel Insights to Therapeutic Strategies" (Wiley-VCH, 2005), which is the most comprehensive textbook on depression published in the last 25 years.