Severe Mental Illness: Towards Therapeutics

Registration is open for the next Stanley Symposium!
September 16-17, 2025

This two-day in-person symposium, chaired by Dr. Steve Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute, Dr. Guoping Feng of McGovern Institute at MIT and director of the Neurobiology and Model Systems group of the Stanley Center, and Dr. Benjamin Neale of Massachusetts General Hospital and director of Genetics at the Stanley Center, brought together scientists working on the frontiers of genetics, neurobiology, computational psychiatry, and therapeutic development for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and related neuropsychiatric disorders.

The central theme in 2023 addressed the challenges of turning findings from the complex polygenetic landscape of mental illnesses into biology that will inform therapeutic discovery and the identification of biomarkers. It's clear that new technologies, analytic techniques and models of disease are needed that can accommodate the polygenic background influences on even penetrant disease alleles before we can hope to gain greater understanding of pathological mechanisms.

The illnesses highlighted in this symposium cause lifelong disability to millions of persons — combined, more than 3 percent of the global population is affected by these severe disorders.

Agenda Day 1 Tuesday, September 19, 2023
8:45 – 8:55 Welcome Steve Hyman Broad Institute
Keynote
8:55 – 10:05 Keynote: Circuit analysis of the marmoset prefrontal cortex as it relates to the heart and mind of depression Angela Roberts University of Cambridge
Session 1: Developmental Biology underlying Psychiatric Disease Mechanisms Chair: Guoping Feng, MIT/Broad Institute
10:05 – 10:35 From Stem Cells to Assembloids and Towards Buildings Human Circuits in Living Systems Sergiu Pasca Stanford University
10:35 – 10:50 Coffee Break
10:50 – 11:20 Computational psychiatry across species to study the biology of hallucinations Katharina Schmack The Francis Crick Institute 11:20 – 11:50 Cross-model signaling in schizophrenia Gord Fishell Broad Institute, Harvard Medical School 11:50 – 12:20 Cellular mechanisms of adolescent development and psychiatric vulnerability Beth Stevens Broad Institute, Boston Children's Hospital
12:20 – 1:20 Lunch
Session 2: Genetic phenotypes & Therapeutics Chair: Ben Neale, MGH/Broad Institute
1:20 – 1:30 Session Introduction Ben Neale, MGH/Broad Institute 1:30 – 2:00 ModelLing and design of cell type specific enhancers using single-cell multi-omics and deep learning Stein Aerts University of Leuven 2:00 – 2:30 The Spectrum of Genetic Variants Associated with Autism and Related Neurodevelopmental Disorders Wendy Chung Boston Children's Hospital 2:30 – 3:00 Characterizing non-coding DNA variants in the human genome Yin Shen UCSF
3:00 – 3:15 Coffee Break
3:15 – 3:45 Mechanistic insights from genetic mouse models of schizophrenia based on human (SCHEMA) rare variants Morgan Sheng Broad Institute, MIT 3:45 – 4:25 Biomarkers derived from NREM sleep neurophysiology in schizophrenia Jen Q. Pan Broad Institute 4:25 – 4:50 Poster Session Previews 4:50 – 5:00 Closing Remarks 5:00 – 7:00 Poster Session and reception

Day 2 Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Keynote
8:45 – 9:55 Keynote: Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptor Agonists as Novel Treatments for Schizophrenia Steve Paul Karuna Therapeutics
Session 3: Therapeutics and Biomarkers Chair: Steve Hyman, Harvard/Broad Institute
9:55 – 10:25 What’s Next? How to Catalyze Growth in Neuropsychiatric R&D Bill Martin Janssen 10:25 – 10:55 AI-based Phenotyping and Assessment of Drug Response Dina Katabi MIT
10:55 – 11:10 Coffee Break
11:10 – 11:40 Targeting synaptic and neural plasticity for novel, improved treatments for serious mental illness Husseini Manji Oxford University 11:40 – 12:10 Spotlight: Revealing a brain vascular basis for Alzheimer's disease risk Andrew Yang UCSF 12:10 – 12:40 Panning for Autoantibodies in the Cerebrospinal Fluid of People with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: Findings and Implications Christopher Bartley NIMH 12:40 – 1:20 Lunch
Session 4: Foundational Tools and methods to advance discovery Chair: Morgan Sheng, MIT/Broad Institute
1:20 – 1:30 Session Introduction Morgan Sheng, MIT/Broad Institute 1:30 – 2:00 Spatially resolved single-cell translatomic Xiao Wang Broad Institute, MIT 2:00 – 2:30 Spatial and Single Cell Genomics for Next Generation Neuroscience Evan Macosko Broad Institute, MGH
2:30 – 2:50 Coffee Break
2:50 – 3:10 AAV tools for restoring and modulating gene and cell function throughout the brain Ben Deverman Broad Institute 3:10 – 3:40 Multi-donor “Chimeroids” as models for human inter-individual variability Paola Arlotta Broad Institute 3:40 – 4:20 Spotlight: What Makes Us Human? Development and Evolution of the Prefrontal Cortex Nenad Sestan Yale University School of Medicine 4:20 – 4:30 Concluding remarks from symposium chairs