Chair in Metabolic Diseases and Deputy Director of Deakin’s IMPACT, the Institute for Mental and Physical Health and Clinical Translation, Professor Ken Walder uses molecular biology and bioinformatics techniques to examine how drugs currently used in mental health work, and to screen other drugs for their potential as new options for treating depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. His team’s novel gene-expression-signature based platform led to a glaucoma drug (methazolamide) being successfully repurposed for type 2 diabetes, providing a likely new therapeutic that could help millions of sufferers worldwide.
Research interests
Drug discovery, repurposing drugs, biomarkers
