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Bio-Modeling Systems and the Foundation FondaMental join forces to decipher the immuno-inflammatory mechanisms that could give rise to psychiatric diseases, such as bipolar disorders and schizophrenia, and thus open novel therapeutic avenues.

Dassault Group will bring its support for three years to Fondation FondaMental with the creation of a Prize. Marcel Dassault Prize for Research in Mental Disorders, is awarded in two categories: "Researcher of the Year Award" and "Outstanding Research project Award". Registrations for the category "Outstanding Research project Award" are open until 15 april 2013. A call for applications for the category "Researcher of the Year Award" will soon be launched on april.

Neurex Symposium is dedicated to cognitive disorders and remediation in schizophrenia and other mental diseases.  It will take place in Strasbourg from 18 to 20 March 2013 at MISHA, 5 allée du Général Rouvillois.

Launched in 2012, this call for projects aims to encourage research on schizophrenia or related disorders to respect Henry Rousset's willing, that is to say focus his legacy to a project of research dedicated specifically to these disorders. The Foundation brought research committee to study applications and select the project.

Conférence

Conference

Tuesday 11 September 2012
Mood disorder in student cohorts by Guy Goodwin (University of Oxford, UK) at the occasion of the series of conferences FondaMental-Chenevier.
See the video

Pr Peter B. Jones will give a lecture at the occasion of the fifth series of Conferences FondaMental-Chenevier.

Peter Jones is Professor of Psychiatry & Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. Since 2008 he has directed the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research & Care (CLAHRC) for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough; since 2009 he has been a director of Cambridge University Health Partners.

Peter B. Jones’s research concerns the epidemiology of mental illness, particularly the psychoses, early life course influences on adult mental health and illness, and the interface between population-based and biological investigations and explanations, including genetics. He also works in treatment research with randomised trials of drug and psychological treatments for psychotic illness. The CLAHRC has focused his efforts on the second translational gap and the urgent need to implement research-based developments in health care. He has served on grant funding panels for the MRC, Wellcome Trust and NIHR.

Professor Jones will review major UK studies of the incidence and prevalence of psychotic disorders, focusing on the Medical Research Council ÆSOP study and on contrasts between bipolar affective disorder, other affective disorders and schizophrenia. He will discuss how such information can be used for backward translation into investigations into the causes and mechanisms of psychosis, and forward into the realm of public health, prediction at the population level and planning of mental health services.
 

Neurobiological basis of Anxiety disorders: the DEVANX project

Scientific meeting organised as the conclusion of a European network project : Devanx, coordinated by Patricia Gaspar (Institut du fer à Moulin, UMR-S 839 - Inserm - UPMC) on Monday 18 June 2012, from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm at the Institut du fer à Moulin

Programme
Required and free registration for  members of FondaMental Network: devanx-meeting@gmail.com

Workshop in Versailles on « Social neurosciences and schizophrenia : from fundamental research to clinical application »

Under the auspices of Fondation FondaMental, Psychiatry Service of Pr. Hardy-Baylé (C.H. de Versailles, RPSM78)  and ECIPSY of Pr. Passerieux (Université Versailles Saint-Quentin), Dr Eric Brunet and Dr Paul Roux organise a workshop on «Social neurosciences and schizophrenia : from fundamental research to clinical application».

Free entry

Program and information

At the occasion of the 5th series of conferences FondaMental-Chenevier dedicated to cohorts, Pr Hans-Ulrich Wittchen (Psychiatry Institute from Dresden) will give a lecture the Tuesday 20th March 2012 on the EDSP sudy which is a prospective longitudinal cohort community study on early developmental stages of psychopathology.

At the occasion of the 5th series of conferences FondaMental-Chenevier dedicated to cohorts, Marie Zins (Inserm, Hôpital Paul Brousse, Villejuif, France) will give a lecture the Tuesday 7 February 2012 on the cohort "Constances" which has been built as a research infrastructure.

At the occasion of the 5th series of conferences FondaMental-Chenevier dedicated to cohorts, Françoise Clavel-Chapelon (epidemiologist, Inserm Research Director at the Gustave-Roussy Institute, Villejiuf, France) will give a lecture the Tuesday 10 January 2012 on the importance of epidemiologic follow-up studies. She will give the example fo E3N cohort she has initiated and which concerns the relation between nutrition, hormones and cancer.

Fondation FondaMental organises its 5th series of conferences. This cycle will be dedicated to issues, methods and limits of cohorts in psychiatry.

Tuesday 13th December 2011, Nicholas Walsh will give a lecture on how brain imaging and epidemiological methods can be powerfully integrated to advance our theoretical understanding of psychiatric disorder aetiology.

Dr Nicholas Walsh is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist based at the Deaprtment of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge. Dr Walsh’s main scientific interests are in understanding the nature, aetiology and developmental evolution of maladaptive self-regulatory neuropsychological processes in affective disorders. Following an undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, Dr Walsh completed a PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. During this time Dr Walsh conducted neuroimaging to investigate the nature of neurocognitive impairment in mood disorders. In addition, in collaboration with colleagues, Dr Walsh conducted experimental treatment studies investigating neurophysiological changes in people with depression whilst undergoing either pharmacological or psychological therapy. Following his PhD, Dr Walsh then gained postdoctoral experience at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh working on experimental studies using brain imaging to examine cognitive and affective processes in bipolar disorder.  For the past four years Dr Walsh has conducted research in Cambridge examining how key risk factors for affective disorders, namely genetic and environmental factors, e.g. childhood adversity, recent negative life events, moderate brain structure and function. For more information on Dr Walsh’s research please see http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?nickwalsh100.

His lecture on the 13th December will be an occasion to argue that longitudinal, prospective studies allow the establishment of antecedents, concomitants or consequences of a disorder. Brain imaging in contrast is a powerful tool for understanding the underlying neurophysiologic mechanisms of such antecedents, concomitants and consequences. He will present recent work conducted with colleagues from Ian Goodyer's lab at the University of Cambridge and Tim Dalgleish's lab at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge. In their study currently well, participants from the ROOTS cohort, a Cambridge based study of adolescent emotional development, underwent magnetic resonance imaging to assess the role of genetic and environmental effects on brain structure and function. Participants in this study varied in terms of genetic risk for affective disorders (e.g. allelic variation in 5-HTTLPR, a key genetic variant associated with serotonergic
functioning) or environmental risk (the presence or absence of childhood adversity). In addition, through the thorough characterisation of this sample gained through longitudinal assessments, they were able to examine the role of other important variables known to influence risk for psychiatric disorder namely recent negative life events, previous psychiatric history and current mood. In this talk Nicholas Walsh will present data demonstrating the role of 5-HTTLPR, childhood adversity, negative recent life events, current mood and previous psychiatric history in moderating individual differences in the neural processing of emotional information, and brain structural development. He will then discuss the theoretical pathways by which these factors may interact to increase risk for subsequent psychiatric disorder.

 

Dr James Kirkbride is a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge interested in the social and genetic causes of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. He is currently the principal investigator of a large first episode study of the social epidemiology of psychosis seen through early intervention psychosis services in a diverse, mixed rural and urban community in the UK (www.sepea.org).  He is also a local PI for a major, large European study of the interaction between genetic and environmental factors in psychosis, the European Union Gene-Environment Interaction [EU-GEI] in Psychosis study (www.eu-gei.eu). Dr Kirkbride currently holds a Sir Henry Wellcome Research Fellowship (Wellcome Trust). He received his PhD in psychiatric epidemiology from the University of Cambridge in 2007, since which time he has authored 24 peer-reviewed publications which have been collectively cited nearly 400 times. He holds an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and graduated top of his undergraduate school with First Class Honours in Geography from the University of Nottingham. He has just completed a seven month research stay at Columbia University (Professor Susser’s group), where he developed his knowledge on both social theory and epigenetic mechanisms in health and disease.
The 5 April 2011, he will explore the role of social environmental factors in psychosis. The brain is the primary organ through which we attempt to make sense of the world around us. Our response to the myriad of daily social interactions, life stressors, positive life events and other socioenvironmental exposures are primarily mediated by the brain. Erroneous responses to the social environment may therefore lead to a range of somatic and psychosocial outcomes, including psychotic disorders. In the last two decades, schizophrenia research has primarily focused on the elucidation of the genetic basis of psychosis, often without consideration of the role of the social environment in psychosis aetiology. This approach has led to equivocal findings with few genes of large effect identified. The epidemiological literature supports a role for the social environment in the aetiology of psychosis, including greater risks associated with migration, ethnic minority status, social disadvantage and isolation, cannabis use and urban living. In this presentation I will outline the epidemiological evidence which suggests a role for the social environment in psychosis aetiology. I argue that treatment of the brain as an “island”, a purely neuro-genetic entity independent of the contextual factors it mediates, will lead us to miss key clues in the aetiology of psychotic disorders. I propose that by investigating whether, how, when and which genetic and environmental factors interact, we will greatly increase our chances of eliciting the complex, multifactorial aetiology of psychosis.

 

FondaMental Foundation 2010-2011 Conference Cycle : “Risk factors in psychosis: identify, understand, prevent”

15 March 2011, Dr Norah Hamdani will give a lecture on “Infectious factors in psychosis: environmental or genetic factors?”

Dr Norah Hamdani is a psychiatrist in Chenevier hospital, Créteil, France. She participates in the VIP (Virus, Immunity, Psychosis) project which is dedicated to the search for markers for immunology, inflammation and virology in bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. This program was selected in the ANR call in 2008 and is being headed up by the FondaMental Foundation.

Environmental factors play a great role in psychosis, including infections contracted during pregnancy or the perinatal period. Epidemiology has proven the importance of the infectious risk, which could probably be exacerbated by genetic factors linked with immunity.

Each year since 2007, FondaMental Foundation organises conferences in Chenevier Hospital for healthcare professional and scientists.
Eminent personalities on the french and international scene are invited to present a subject. These conferences are organised with the support of Bristol-Myers Squibb et Ostuka pharmaceutical France.
The 2010-2011 cycle has begun the 30th of november and is dedicated to "Factors of risk in psychosis: identify, understand, prevent".

Congress

10-12 July 2012: 2012 Serotonin Club Meeting, Montpellier, France

Created by a small but determined group of serotonin researchers in Sydney, Australia in 1987, the Serotonin Club has grown into a dynamic research society with over 450 members from around the world.
Serotonin continues to be the focus for research important to substance abuse, pain, cardiovascular function, digestive processes, and mental health.
The Congress organised in Montpellier will celebrate alos the 25th anniversary of the Serotonin Club.

For more information on the final program, abstract submission and registration

Preferential rates for members of the Fondation FondamMental

April 15 early bird registration deadline for Ninth International Conference on Bipolar Disorder

The “Ninth International Conference on Bipolar Disorder” is scheduled for June 9-11, 2011 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The International Conference on Bipolar Disorder has become the most important and well attended meeting focusing on bipolar disorder. Clinicians, researchers, patients and consumers from around the world will again come together for this three day conference to share their clinical expertise, research findings and personal experiences with the goal of improving the quality of life for those living with bipolar disorder.

Information on the conference agenda and registration can be located on the website.  A reduced tuition rate is available for registrations received before April 15, 2011.  Online registration can be used by credit card users.

Hotel accommodations are available at the Westin Convention Center Pittsburgh Hotel.  The room block at the Westin Convention Center Hotel is available from June 8 through June 12, 2011.  The standard room rate is $149, plus tax, for a single or a double room. Online reservations can be booked at www.starwoodmeeting.com/book/9thbipolar      

There is a another block of rooms available at the at the Courtyard by Marriott- Pittsburgh Downtown which is a hotel next to the Westin Hotel and where rooms are available from June 6 through June 11 at the rate of $159, plus tax, per night.  To make reservations there, visit the hotel website, www.courtyardpittsburghdowntown.com

Details can be found on the conference website, www.9thbipolar.org

For additional information or to receive a brochure, please contact Maria Pena-Jordan at penajordanmi@upmc.edu or (412) 802-6917.

News

Through an ambitious scientific cooperation, the FondaMental Foundation and AstraZeneca are engaged to create a new network of Experts Centres dedicated to diagnostic, observation et study of resistant depression.
This collaboration will allow to built the tools needed to propose an effective and precise screening test to the patients and to improve care and therapeutic strategies.

Biocortech, the biotech company dedicated to the development of biological diagnostics for personalized psychiatry, and FondaMental, the foundation of scientific cooperation for mental health research and care, announce the signing of a strategic alliance to validate biomarkers for personalized psychiatry.

This strategic alliance aims at speeding up the availability of qualified blood tests for diagnosis, prognosis, drug selection and monitoring for a personalized medical management of patients suffering from mental health disorders. Concretely, Biocortech and FondaMental will collaborate in clinically validating blood tests measuring biomarkers identified by Biocortech or in FondaMental’s network of scientific excellence. Biocortech and FondaMental will define relevant clinical settings and clinical issues to be addressed, build up adequate resources to access blood samples of patients with proper medical records, set up and monitor clinical trials. Biocortech will have responsibility for industrializing and commercializing qualified tests.

Further information
 

The Directorate General for Hospitalisation and Organization of Treatment of the Ministry of Health has granted €2.4 million to eight Expert Centres on Bipolar Disorders created by FondaMental Foundation, for the development of their health care activities.  

This financial endowment ensures the durability of the measures taken, initiated solely by through the goodwill of hospital teams, and is dedicated torecognizes  the importance of these centres in the prevention, detection and enhancement of medical care.

Circular DGOS/R1/DSS/2010/177 of 31 May 2010 concerning 2010 health establishment tariffs.
 

This comic strip is written by the scenarist Patrice Guillon and her daughter, Emilie, who's got bipolar disorders. This is a moving autobiography of the chaotic and painful course of a young woman from the first symptoms to the final diagnosis and the acceptance of the disease. To read and to offer !
Editions La Boîte à Bulles
 

Research

FondaMental Foundation launchs three new calls to finance research in psychiatry:

• Henry Rousset Prize, dedicated to research on schizophrenia and related disorders
• Research Fellowships FondaMental Foundation - Servier for post-doctorants
• Research Scholarships FondaMental Foundation - Institut Lilly for Masters II

More information
> on the research fellowships
> on the Henry Rousset Prize

A study, published the 9th February 2012 in Public Library of Science - Genetics, proves that genetic mutations disturbing communication between neurones are involved in autism. These findings are the result of the collaboration between scientists from Pasteur Institute, CNRS, Inserm and AP-HP, with the Paris Diderot University, Robert Debré Hospital, Gillberg Centre of Neuopsychiatry (Sweden), Ulm University (Germany), Centre National de Génotypage - CEA and the FondaMental Foundation.

The communication (Pasteur Institute)

In partnership with the Servier Research Group, the FondaMental Foundation will award fellowships to qualified individuals at the doctoral and postdoctoral level to pursue full-time research training in ongoing research projects in mental health areas supported by the Foundation.
 
Further information

Registration document

European community gives support (€1,999,138) to this project for a European roadmap of the research in psychiatry

On 9 November 2010, Fondation FondaMental responded to a European (FP7) call for proposals, in partnership with three other European networks (Spain, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom,) with a view to setting up a European roadmap of psychiatric health care and psychiatric research (the ROAMER project). The aim is to propose infrastructures adapted to medical and scientific challenges.
 

The Cohorts project on mental disorders, headed up by the FondaMental foundation (Psy-Coh), obtains a grant from the government programme “Investments for the Future”
Tuesday 25 January 2011, Valérie Pécresse, Ministry of Research, has presented the 10 projects selected in the Cohorts call launched by “Investments for the Future”. The grant of €1,9 million is less than expected but gives an impulse to this project which aims to increase our understanding of mental disorders and to improve early diagnosis and prevention. This grant will allow us to launch the project and find financial partners.

The FondaMental Foundation project: Psy-Coh
The aim is to create a French cohort on three of the most severe mental disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and Asperger syndrome. The objective of this cohort is, over a period of 10 years, to study young adults who have psychotic disorders following their first episode and patients with Asperger syndrome during 10 years. The FondaMental Expert Centers infrastructure will be used for the recruitment of patients. The goal is to recruit and follow 1000 patients with bipolar disorders, 800 patients with schizophrenia and 200 patients with Asperger syndrome.

Psy-Coh: an impulse for research in psychiatry
The existence of a cohort on mental disorders will help research in psychiatry by giving access to reliable and diverse data (clinical, cognitive, biological…). The aim is to integrate research programmes in clinic, epidemiology, health economy, using modern neurosciences tools such as brain imaging, cognition, neurobiology, genetics, immunology…

These data will allow us to:
• improve early diagnosis and prevention thanks to biomarkers;
• identifiy patients’ pathways and link the evolution of their disorders with biomarkers of risk and prognostics;
• evaluate patients’ pathways in the health care system, the cost of these disorders and the evolution of the patients’ quality of life;
• develop national and international scientific cooperation with public and private partners.
 

The french government has created an ambitious program "Investment for Future", which is dedicated to the financement of five major strategic priorities by the national loan. The FondaMental Foundation has proposed two projects:

Psy-Coh: The 30th of september 2010, FondaMental Foundation has deposited a project on a 10-year study of 2000 young patients with bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and Asperger syndrome to identify biomarkers and risk factors of disease course, to improve diagnostic strategies, and to inform decisions makers of mental health impacts on public health.

Bio-Psy: The 22th of november 2010, FondaMental Foundation has deposited a project for a “Laboratory of Biological Psychiatry” (Bio-Psy) which aims at carrying out cutting edge research associating psychiatrists, neuroscientists, geneticists, and other scientists. Bio-Psy comprises 28 research groups, including 8 junior groups. It reaches the critical size and international visibility necessary to achieve a qualitative and quantitative jump in Psychiatry research in France. It will provide the most advanced training to a new generation of young psychiatrists, researchers, and health professionals. In collaboration with patients and families associations Bio-Psy will also contribute to information and education of the lay public to help reduce the prejudice and fear which surround psychiatric disorders. Finally, Bio-Psy will constitute a major component of a future Institute of Psychiatry, which will combine world-class research in biological approaches with cognitive, social, and public health studies. Thus, the creation of Bio-Psy as a Laboratory of Excellence would have a huge added value by increasing the synergism between its participants and opening new avenues for research in Psychiatry in France.

Bio-Psy strategic objectives are to:

• Better understand the causes and mechanisms of mental disorders.
• Identify biomarkers for early diagnosis and follow‐up.
• Design new approaches for treatment and prevention.
• Carry out an economic cost and benefit analysis, and explore psycho-social interventions.

FondaMental Foundation is a partner of a project carried by Thomas Bourgeron (Institut Pasteur) which aims to gather clinicians, geneticists and neurobiologists to identify the genetic bases of high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HF-ASD).

• The first objective is to create and implement a common standardised assessment battery and database at each participating centre. The collection of exactly the same phenotypic data is crucial for genetic studies in homogeneous subtypes of ASD. Within the European High-functioning Autism network, extensive clinical (medical, psychiatric and neuropsychological) data will be collected using a common standardised electronic medical file (e-Asperger).
• The second objective is to obtain a high-resolution genomic profiling of patients with HF-ASD.
• The third objective is to correlate the phenotypic and genetic data collected through this projetc.

The 9th of november 2010, FondaMental Foundation has replied to a european call for projetcs with three other european networks (UK, Spain, Netherlands). The aim is to built a european roadmap for mental health research, with distinct components directed to mental disorders, mental health, and wellbeing, would build upon existing, state-of-the-art mental health research -- biological, psychological, epidemiological, social and public health -- and priority setting across Europe and the rest of the world, focusing on high quality scientific research and the priorities set out in the European Parliament Resolution, namely ”prevention, early detection, intervention and treatment of mental disorders”.