Cardiff University has formed a drug discovery collaboration with Takeda to identify new approaches for treating schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.
The collaboration will combine the University’s large scale genomic data, and expertise in psychiatric genetics, genomics and neuroscience, with Takeda’s drug discovery and clinical development capabilities.
Cardiff University is home to world-leading biological psychiatry research that will aid Takeda in developing new approaches for treating psychiatric disorders, according to the press release.
The partnership will be co-led by Professor Lawrence Wilkinson, scientific director of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, who said: “Recent developments in psychiatric genetics and genomics, combined with advances in neuroscience, mean there is now a real prospect of overcoming the obstacles that have held back progress in developing new drugs for psychiatric disorders.”
Major psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder collectively represent an enormous unmet health need, accounting for approximately 20% of all years lost to disability globally, according to the World Health Organisation.
However, the collaboration is fantastic news for those working on or affected by psychiatric disorders, as Ceri Davies, head of the Neuroscience Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda stated: “By working in partnership with world-leading scientific and clinical neuropsychiatric experts at Cardiff University we have a unique opportunity to create a new wave of medicines, that are grounded in the genomic understanding of the disease, for patients suffering from schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders.”
