Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics-Coordinating Center

University of California, Los Angeles
Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics-Coordinating Center

Principal Investigator: Dr. Robert Bilder
Grant Number: 1-UL1-RR024911-01
Award Amount : $21.9 M

Abstract (provided by applicant): The Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics (CNP) advances the NIH Roadmap Initiative by assembling an interdisciplinary research team to address major unsolved challenges in research on behavioral disorders. The CNP leverages the new discipline of phenomics - the systematic study of human phenotypes on a genome-wide level - by integrating basic, clinical and information sciences. Neuropsychiatric disorders have enormous public health significance, and there is currently a broad chasm between the basic and clinical research strategies used to study these disorders. The CNP breaks down artificial boundaries between psychiatric syndromes by studying important brain-relevant phenotypes across different diagnoses, and by combining basic and clinical sciences within the same projects. The CNP further focuses on developing novel analytic tools to study complex multivariate phenotypes on a genome-wide scale, and informatics approaches for the graphical visualization, representation and testing of multi-level interdisciplinary hypotheses spanning concepts from genome to syndrome. The CNP comprises 8 components led by a team of 52 investigators representing diverse disciplines. The CNP team will execute five interlocking R01 projects supported by two P30 cores and this U54 Coordinating Center. The U54 comprises: (1) an Administrative Group; (2) an Executive Operations Team that will collaboratively complete day-to-day consortium-wide planning, budget management, and evaluation activities to assure optimal integration among the research projects and cores; (3) the Steering Committee for twice-yearly reviews of progress and binding votes on critical strategic directions and resources allocations; and (4) an External Advisory Board to provide annual evaluative review, guiding performance through recommendations to the Steering Committee and Executive Operations Team. Interaction and innovation will be further promoted by annual retreats with invited external experts; a series of other knowledge-sharing activities; and a proof-of- concept pilot project program. The U54 team will also manage data sharing and dissemination activities consortium-wide, ensuring that the conceptual and data products of the CNP are freely available as a resource to the international research community.