NIMHANS, NCBS receive Rs 100 cr grant to accelerate research of mental illnesses, Health News, ET HealthWorld
NCBS
) to set up the Centre for Brain and Mind (CBM). The Centre will facilitate research to understand the causes, correlates, and course of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, dementia, and addiction, to explore potential interventions and treatments for these five diseases.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding, RNPF will support the activities of CBM for five years starting April 2023. Over these five years, CBM will simultaneously pursue long-term research and capacity building for both research and practice in the mental health field.
Commenting on the grant, Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, said, Mental health is an area that demands more attention and support. The recent pandemic brought out this need even more starkly. The Centre for Brain and Mind hopes to build an ecosystem for the larger community of mental health practitioners. Its research on five critical disorders will be open-sourced to allow more innovation in both academics and practice.
Since 2016, NIMHANS, along with NCBS and inStem, have been collaborating on a project (then supported by the Department of Biotechnology andPratiksha Trust), to build a research platform for facilitating the discovery of better solutions for mental illness, which will now be housed at the CBM. The capacity-building component of CBMs work will conduct public-facing interventions around severe mental illness to reduce stigma and enhance awareness. It will also devise actionable measures to address causes that lead to vulnerability in developing a mental illness or ameliorate the progression of disease in those who have developed an illness. By developing a core group of clinician researchers and basic scientists skilled in critical technologies and novel methods, the Centre will also establish a pipeline of younger researchers to carry forward this long-term enquiry.
Speaking about the potential of this grant, Dr Pratima Murthy, Director, NIMHANS, said, NIMHANS has been collaborating with NCBS and inStem to study a large number of families of patients with severe mental illnesses and generate a longitudinal cohort. The in-depth biological and clinical assessment of this cohort has immense potential for breakthrough discoveries, with implications in turn for translation into better care for persons with mental illnesses.
NCBS-TIFR, along with NIMHANS and inStem, has built a platform to facilitate discovery science that leads to better solutions for mental illness. The financial support from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies will allow us to pursue long-term research on patients. This will allow insights into mental illness and how it develops and impacts brain function. Such understanding will enable the development of novel medicines, added Prof LS Shashidhara, Director, NCBS-TIFR.
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Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 10:23 am