The underlying biology of psychiatric disease remains largely a mystery. The Broad's Psychiatric Disease Program aims to unravel the molecular basis of psychiatric disease, with the ultimate aim of improving diagnosis, treatment and, if possible, prevention. The primary emphasis is on bipolar disease, schizophrenia, and major depression, illnesses that together affect more than three percent of the human population.

In February 2007, the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research within the Broad Institute’s Psychiatric Disease Program was founded by a grant from the Stanley Medical Research Institute. The Stanley Center is a unique entity at the Broad, in that we are clearly therapeutically focused. Our goal is to create a cohesive small organization that combines the creativity, spontaneity, and brilliant ideas of academia with the focus, structure, and multi-disciplinary approaches of industrial drug discovery. The Stanley Center’s mission is to discover new approaches to the molecular understanding, diagnosis, and pharmacological treatment of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depression. 

As a current summary of our progress and plans, we have included our Executive Summary from our 2009 Stanley Center Annual Progress Report (written and submitted in January 2010).

Within the Psychiatric Disease Program and the Stanley Center, major areas of focus include:

Genetic analysis

A primary emphasis is to identify and characterize the risk genes for psychiatric diseases through linkage and association studies in the human population.

Go to Genetic analysis