Roche, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center neurology, genomics news

Roche, the university, and medical center joined the CommonMind Consortium to generate and analyze large-scale genomic data from patients with neuropsychiatric diseases and make the data and results publically available. The three parties join founding members Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (Tokyo:4502, Osaka, Japan), the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital (New York, N.Y.), the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pa.), NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (Bethesda, Md.), and non-profit Sage Bionetworks (Seattle, Wash.). Sage announced last week that it will merge with the DREAM Project (Seattle, Wash.).

The goal of the consortium's first phase is to generate whole genome transcriptome data on the prefrontal cortex as well as high-density SNP genotypes from postmortem brain samples from schizophrenia and control tissue collections. The samples will come from the Icahn School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center while funding will be provided by Takeda, Roche and NIMH. NIMH said it has contributed $2 million to researchers under the consortium, while Sage Bionetworks said Roche and Takeda have contributed $500,000 each. ...