Jha Lab

Manish Jha, M.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and O’Donnell Clinical Neuroscience Scholar at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX. He received his medical degree from Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, India, and completed his residency training in General Psychiatry at UT Southwestern. After residency, he worked for three years in a full-time clinical position at North Texas State Hospital (NTSH) to fulfill his J1-visa-related commitment and took care of patients who were too dangerous to be managed safely at any other facility in the state of Texas. At NTSH, he gained first-hand appreciation of the urgent need to develop novel therapeutics due to limited efficacy of currently available treatments. Therefore, he joined Dr. Madhukar Trivedi at UT Southwestern in July 2015, where he soon progressed to serve as site PI on three Phase 3 studies of esketamine and a Phase 2 study of pimavanserin. In August 2018, he joined Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to work in a program that has been at the forefront of drug discovery and gained hands-on training in the use of pharmacological agents to probe biological mechanisms. He returned to UT Southwestern in September 2021 to start an NIMH-funded career development award to elucidate the neurocircuit mechanisms of irritability using ketamine as a pharmacological probe. His program of research is focused on developing novel interventions for psychiatric disorders, personalizing the use of currently available treatments, and bringing these scientific discoveries to clinical practice.

Support from the O’Donnell Brain Institute’s Clinical Neuroscience Scholar (OBI CNS) Award has allowed Dr. Jha to gain additional training and expertise in addiction research, as his initial training was focused on depression. Specifically, he has focused on developing novel treatments for methamphetamine use disorder. He served as site PI at UT Southwestern of a NIDA-funded double-blind sham-controlled trial of high-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation for stimulant (cocaine/methamphetamine) use disorder. He currently serves as site PI of two NIDA-funded trials (ketamine for methamphetamine use disorder and combination of naltrexone-bupropion for methamphetamine use disorder). In both of these multi-site RCTs, Dr. Jha’s team has consistently been the highest recruiting site. The support from OBI CNS has also been critical in supporting pilot studies at UT Southwestern. These include the first trial of a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist (tirzepatide) for methamphetamine use disorder, which was completed in February 2026, and the ongoing trial of accelerated intermittent theta burst stimulation (aiTBS) for stimulant (cocaine/methamphetamine/prescription) use disorder. The open label trial of tirzepatide informed his proposal to NIDA for a multi-site randomized controlled trial that was reviewed at the NIDA Council on March 9, 2026. The aiTBS trial provided preliminary data for a multi-site RCT submission to NIDA in February 2026. Together, the ongoing and upcoming research activities supported by the OBI CNS award have positioned Dr. Jha’s lab to be at the cutting-edge of developing novel treatments for methamphetamine use disorder, a chronic disorder for which there are currently no FDA-approved treatments.