Global consortium involving centre researchers aims to prevent failures in mental health drug treatments

Researchers based in the Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG) at Cardiff University have joined forces with organisations across Europe in a project to develop new approaches to personalising mental health treatments.

Psych-STRATA is a research initiative funded by the European Commission that focuses on treatment resistance (TR), a clinical presentation in which people experiencing mental ill-health don’t respond to drugs typically prescribed for their symptoms.

Treatment resistance affects a third of patients with severe mental health disorders, and is well-known for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.

The project is split into seven work packages that each tackle a different area of treatment resistance research and includes the conduction of a randomised controlled trial of early intensive treatment strategies.

One of the project’s aims is focused on a greater understanding of the biological basis for treatment resistance across psychiatric diagnoses. Researchers at Cardiff University, led by Professors James Walters and Professor Ian Jones, hope to uncover new ways to improve the delivery of mental health treatments using information such as genetic data, which is not currently accessible to clinicians.

Researchers at the CNGG are leading Psych-STRATA work package one, which aims to assess whether genetic factors could be used to identify those at risk of treatment resistance in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder.

Researcher Dr Antonio Pardiñas commented on the work:

“This transdiagnostic work is particularly focused on why so many people, over half of those affected by treatment resistance in some studies, do not respond to conventional treatment for severe mental health disorders. The way we conduct research and collect data from those with psychiatric disorders is traditionally very demanding in terms of time and skills.

“However, this doesn’t reflect people’s journeys throughout mental healthcare systems, as both diagnoses and drugs can change multiple times before TR comes into the clinical picture.

“Psych-STRATA has given us the opportunity to partner with other world-class institutes to access massive datasets of people with high-quality clinical records and genomic data.

“Now, we can at least break diagnostic boundaries, and search for causes of treatment resistance across mental health conditions, and hopefully at the level of specific symptoms and clinical presentations.”

Research Associate Isabella Willcocks, who is behind the bioinformatics work on the project, commented:

“It is through the careful preparation and combination of these datasets together that it becomes possible to identify common genetic variation associated with treatment resistance, both within each disorder specifically, and across the three combined.”

“This projects represents an opportunity to bring together hitherto unforeseen sample sizes to answer these questions, thanks to extensive collaboration of researchers on a global scale, making it a truly exciting project to be a part of.”

Psych-STRATA recently released a series of interviews with international members of each of the project’s work packages showcasing the exciting work going on, presented in Dutch, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and English. 

Watch Dr Pardiñas discuss the work at the CNGG that is contributing to the Psych-STRATA hopes of revolutionising mental health treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh2Ry5IgLfY