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GXC 2025 Online Virtual Conference - Mental Health Without Borders

Advances in ADHD and Co-Occurring Disorders: Genetics & Beyond

Barbara Franke, Ph.D.
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Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

  • Identify the current genetic and neurobiological underpinnings of ADHD and its comorbidities based on large-scale consortia research

  • Evaluate the clinical relevance of biological markers for improved diagnosis and treatment response prediction in neurodevelopmental disorders.

  • Translate insights from molecular and neuroimaging studies into potential applications for therapeutic development and precision medicine.

Educational Goal

Participants will enhance their understanding of the genetic and neurobiological foundations of ADHD and related neurodevelopmental disorders. This session supports clinical growth by advancing knowledge of precision medicine approaches, enabling more targeted diagnosis, treatment planning, and intervention strategies grounded in molecular psychiatry.

Description

Over the past two decades, our understanding of neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders—particularly ADHD and its frequent comorbidities—has moved from symptom-based models toward biologically-grounded frameworks. This session outlines the progress in psychiatric genetics, highlighting validated insights from large-scale international collaborations and translational research.


Initial genome-wide association studies (GWAS) involving ADHD identified significant heritability but lacked the statistical power to define underlying mechanisms. Today, through efforts like the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), IMpACT, and ENIGMA, large meta-analyses have consistently uncovered common and rare genetic variants linked to ADHD. These findings are now being integrated with neuroimaging data and experimental models to define biological pathways.


This presentation explores how these converging methods—including iPSC-derived neurons, bioinformatics, and neuroimaging genetics—are mapping the path from genotype to phenotype. It also reviews how these advances inform our understanding of comorbidities (e.g., autism, mood disorders), treatment response variability, and the goal of biologically anchored diagnosis and therapeutic innovation. Special attention is given to the urgent clinical relevance of these findings: ADHD is a family illness with profound long-term impact if left untreated. Timely diagnosis and interventions require a scientific and therapeutic model that reflects the complexity of its etiology.


Presenters

Barbara Franke, Ph.D.
Prof. Barbara Franke is Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She is the head of the Department of Medical Neuroscience at Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) and a member of the Strategy Board of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, and Academia Europaea, and she was granted knighthood in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. Educated in Giessen (Germany) and Utrecht (The Netherlands), she obtained her PhD in molecular signal-transduction in Utrecht before joining Radboud University. Her research is focused on understanding the genetic contribution to neurodevelopmental psychiatric conditions, especially ADHD and its comorbidities. Beyond gene-finding, she uses complementary approaches (bioinformatics, i-neurons, small animal models, neuroimaging genetics) to map biological pathways from gene to disease. Throughout her career, she formulated her own ambition as contributing to improving healthcare for people with psychiatric conditions. She aims to do so through her work on clarifying the biology of such conditions as well as by bringing together researchers across disciplines to work together on integrating knowledge across multiple levels, from molecular to clinical. She has obtained prestigious grants, including a personal Vici grant from the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research and several interdisciplinary EU consortium grants. She founded and coordinates the International Multicentre persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT) and the ECNP Network ‘ADHD across the Lifespan’, is a co-founder of ENIGMA (the currently largest consortium worldwide on neuroimaging and genetics), and is one of two leaders each of ENIGMA’s ADHD Working Group and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium’s ADHD Working Group. From 2018 to 2023, she was an elected member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics, since 2024, she is a member of the Executive Board of ECNP-Neuroscience Applied. Since 2019, she holds an honorary Adjunct Professorship at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany as well as an honorary Skou Professorship at Aarhus University in Denmark. Barbara Franke has (co-)authored over 550 peer-reviewed publications.