Two Yale School of Medicine scientists have been awarded a five-year, $76 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their project titled, “ProCAN: Psychosis-Risk Outcomes Compound Assessment Network,” as part of the Accelerated Medicines Partnership® – Schizophrenia (AMP® SCZ).
Scott W. Woods, MD, Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, and Youngsun T. Cho, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and in the Child Study Center, will lead the five-year study in collaboration with investigators from 17 other research sites.
Nearly one in five young people presenting for psychiatric care are identified as being at clinical high risk for psychosis, and approximately 20 percent of this population will go on to develop a psychotic disorder. Despite this critical public health need, drug development to assist these individuals has not kept pace.
In collaboration with investigators from other research sites, the Yale network will evaluate identified drug compounds for their potential to detect a signal on one or more biological, digital, cognitive, or clinical outcome measures in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis and generate novel insights to prevent the onset of schizophrenia and other psychoses. This project builds on a prior, 28-site five-year AMP SCZ observational study for which Woods has also served as contact principal investigator.
The AMP program was launched in 2014 as a public-private partnership between NIH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, biopharmaceutical companies, non-profits, and other organizations. The program, managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), aims to transform the current model for developing new diagnostics and treatments.
Woods is director of Yale's PRIME Clinic for patients at clinical high risk for psychosis and is the contact PI who will oversee this research project. His research focuses on identifying and characterizing young people at clinical high risk for psychosis and addressing their treatment and prevention needs.
Cho is director of the Neuroimaging, Neurocomputation, and Neurogenetics (N3) Division in Yale's Department of Psychiatry. On the current project, she is a multiple PI who will focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging correlates of medication response and regulatory standards for data collection and transfer.
Other multiple principal investigators on this research project include Carrie E. Bearden, professor in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the Department of Psychology at UCLA, and John M. Kane, professor of psychiatry and molecular medicine in the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and co-director of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.
NIH, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency. NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.
Established by Congress in 1990, the FNIH is an independent, not-for-profit charitable organization that convenes public and private partnerships between the NIH, academia, life science companies and patient advocacy groups.
ACCELERATING MEDICINES PARTNERSHIP® and AMP® are registered service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Research reported in this announcement was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1U01MH137298-01.