Objective
The theme of this collaborative project is development and application of neuroimaging and bioinformatics tools to study lipid metabolism as a common pathogenic link between psychotic disorders and its metabolic co-morbidities. The overall objective is to identify, prioritize and evaluate multi-modal blood and neuroimaging markers with diagnostic potential for prediction and monitoring of psychotic disorders and associated metabolic co-morbidities. We aim to (1) optimise a multidisciplinary approach for combining positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with metabolomics approaches, (2) develop a PET-method for exploring endocannabinoid pathways in early psychosis in longitudinal study setting, and (3) develop combined PET-MRI biomarker methodology for psychiatric disorders by studying neurotransmitter interactions with multiple PET scan and MRI sequences. The balance of two or more neurotransmitter systems may function as a novel biomarker in these disorders. The expected impacts are (1) etiopathogenic understanding, (2) new validated multi-modal markers for early disease detection and monitoring, (3) new tools for the identification of subjects who may benefit from specific treatment (4) discovery of new avenues for disease prevention and therapy, and (5) new tools and processes for applying brain imaging in personalised medicine. The consortium brings together clinicians, researchers and industry partners in the domains of psychiatry, neuroimaging, metabolic research, systems biology and bioinformatics.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-HEALTH-2013-INNOVATION-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research projectCoordinator
20014 Turku
Finland