Columbia University right now introduced the institution of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health at Columbia University. The middle will catalyze the scientific innovation and medical implementation of precision medication to advance the prevention, analysis, and therapy of psychological sickness. The middle is being established with a $75 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), a global philanthropic group, as a part of SNF’s Global Health Initiative (GHI).

The SNF Center is a joint effort of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. It might be embedded inside Columbia University’s distinctive ecosystem of analysis and medical companies and can draw upon experience from the Columbia-affiliated New York Genome Center and the New York State Office of Mental Health.

The rising sophistication of precision medication is permitting scientists and well being care suppliers to combine every individual’s distinctive genomic, physiologic, and well being profiles to create optimized prevention and therapy methods. Columbia University has been on the forefront of latest efforts to elucidate the genetic and organic adjustments that trigger a large number of extreme psychological diseases. The SNF Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health will construct upon and develop this data by accumulating large datasets of genomic sequences and longitudinal medical data.  At the identical time, by harnessing interdisciplinary experience from biologists to clinicians, the middle will allow the fast creation, from bench to bedside, of recent therapeutic and prevention approaches based mostly upon outlined etiologies shared by distinct subgroups of sufferers.

“The insights provided by genomics and precision medicine are proving of tremendous value in improving people’s health and lives,” mentioned Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger. “Through this new center, our researchers will meet an urgent human need by harnessing precision medicine to promote mental health for all. We are enormously grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for joining with Columbia in meeting this profound scientific and humanitarian challenge.”

“The significant progress we have made in caring for our physical health in recent decades is apparent, but just as clear is the fact that we have left behind our mental health,” mentioned SNF Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos. “All of us at SNF are proud to support the doctors, scientists, and mental health professionals at Columbia in bringing together deep expertise with an equally deep sense of humanity to address one of the most critical issues of our time.”

The collaboration between Columbia and SNF arose from a joint imaginative and prescient for serving to to scale back the person and societal toll of psychological sickness and to fight social inequality, stigma, and discrimination in psychological well being care. The ecosystem of information and observe at Columbia University brings collectively analysis and medical companies and connects the private and non-private sectors. By driving innovation in psychological well being analysis and sharing advances as extensively as attainable, Columbia and SNF will work to assist be sure that improved remedies are equally out there to everybody.

“Many existing treatments in psychiatry do not get at root causes,” mentioned Katrina Armstrong, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences on the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “We welcome this opportunity to develop new approaches that focus on disease mechanisms and target treatment based on an individual’s unique genetic makeup and biology for the ultimate benefit of lifting up care for the community at large.”

Among the most important initiatives of the SNF Center is the Genomic Medicine for Mental Health Advancement (GeMMA) initiative, being carried out in shut collaboration with the New York Genome Center (NYGC). Tom Maniatis, PhD, Evnin Family Scientific Director and CEO of the NYGC and Isidore Edelman Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia, mentioned, “The GeMMA initiative will not only provide essential information for individual patients, it will also build upon and expand pioneering work at Columbia University central to establishing ‘causal’ relationships between genetic variation and brain function, which is a critical step in the development of new approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness.”

The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) is a significant associate of the SNF Center with a famend repute as one of many largest and most progressive studying public psychological healthcare programs within the nation. OMH Commissioner Ann Sullivan, MD mentioned, “The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health ushers in an entirely new era of mental health care through the unprecedented potential for integration of precision psychiatry into standard clinical practice. OMH is proud to partner with Columbia University on this transformative mission, and we are deeply grateful to SNF for their remarkable commitment to improving mental health worldwide.”

The middle might be co-directed by Sander Markx, MD, assistant professor of medical psychiatry at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) and director of the Center for Precision Neuropsychiatry on the New York State Psychiatric Institute; Steven A. Kushner, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry at VP&S and a principal investigator on the New York State Psychiatric Institute; and Joseph Gogos, MD, PhD, professor of physiology & mobile biophysics, neuroscience, and psychiatry at VP&S and a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, who collectively conveyed their collective imaginative and prescient for the middle: “With this extraordinary support from SNF, we are poised to build on the accelerating progress in psychiatric genomics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and stem cell biology to revolutionize the treatment of mental illness. Through this new understanding, we are fundamentally committed to helping combat stigma and discrimination against people living with mental illness and realizing improved mental health care for all.”