Goal of the Psychiatric Biomarkers Network

Finding robust, replicable, and measurable biological markers for better diagnosis, treatment and support of clinical trials for schizophrenia and bipolar spectrum disorders

Establishment of the SSBC

Schizophrenia and bipolar spectrum disorders are serious mental illnesses that together affect approximately 4% of the population. These disorders often emerge in adolescence or young adulthood and affect education, social functioning and transition into independence.

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are categorized as two distinct diagnoses in the main guide for mental health providers (DSM-5) even though they are overlapping in key aspects across symptoms, underlying genetics and responses to antipsychotic drugs. This overlap presents an enormous challenge to clinical treatment and even more so to the development of new therapeutics, as clinical trials based on the current diagnoses have a very high failure rate, most likely the result of undetected mixing of individuals with distinct underlying biology.

Progress in the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar spectrum disorders has been stagnating over the past decades and new treatment options are greatly needed. Progress has been hampered by our limited understanding of the biological disease mechanisms and the lack of measurable biological markers (biomarkers) for diagnosis, tracking of disease progression, or monitoring of treatment effectiveness. There are currently no biomarkers available for use in psychiatry. Discovering biomarkers for serious mental illness would dramatically advance the search for novel treatments.

To address this bottle neck, colleagues from several academic centers and industry, formed the Schizophrenia Spectrum Biomarkers Consortium (SSBC) in November 2018 with the goal of discovering robust, replicable, and measurable biological markers to support clinical trials for schizophrenia and bipolar spectrum disorders.

Launch of the SSBC pilot study

In 2021, the SSBC launched a clinical launched a clinical research study at three US sites to collect biological samples and detailed clinical, cognitive, and neuroimaging data from individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and individuals without these disorders. After setting up operations and training site personnel in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first study participants were enrolled in the summer of 2021. The longitudinal clinical research study collected data and samples over several time points.

Expansion to the Psychiatric Biomarkers Network

In 2024, the consortium decided to expand its focus and extend the clinical research study to individuals with bipolar disorder I. To reflect these changes, the consortium changed its name to Psychiatric Biomarkers Network (PBN). In the fall of 2024, the original three collection sites moved from the pilot study to the PBN study and started enrolling participants with bipolar disorder I. In 2025 we are planning to add a fourth study site and continue enrolling participants in our PBN clinical study.