Ming Tso Tsuang (Chinese: 莊明哲; pinyin: Zhuāng Míngzhé; born November 16, 1931) is an American psychiatrist and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.
Tsuang has authored and co-authored more than 600 publications and serves as founding and senior editor of the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B.
[6][3] Tsuang's research interests include the effects of genetic and environmental risk factors on severe mental disorders.
[3] After earning his doctorate degrees, Tsuang began working in 1971 at Washington University School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry.
[2][7][8][9] In 1982, Tsuang joined Alpert Medical School as a researcher and started a new stage of the Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP).
The new stage, known as the New England Family Study, assessed and followed up with a large cohort of infants whose parents had both affective and non-affective psychotic disorders.
During this time, Tsuang partnered with colleague Michael Lyons to conduct the Harvard Twin Study of Substance Abuse.
In the first trial evaluation, the small sample of participants showed reduced negative symptoms and neuropsychological deficits after several weeks of risperidone use.
At this time, his research involved identifying genetic risk factors and biomarkers in order to determine the neurobiology of severe mental disorders.
The study is considered innovative because Tsuang created a framework for biologically diagnosing major mental illness antemortem.
The investigators conducted a microarray analysis of the blood cells of RNA from U.S. Marines before and after they had returned from deployment in Iran and Afghanistan war zones.
The results of the study showed the feasibility of the validation of blood-based biomarkers and helped further efforts to prevent and buffer against the effects of PTSD.