Current projects

Cardiff University has formed a partnership with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) for a drug discovery collaboration to identify new approaches for treating schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.

The collaboration will combine the University's large scale genomic data and world-class expertise in psychiatric genetics, genomics, clinical and basic neuroscience with Takeda’s extensive drug discovery and clinical development capabilities.

The collaboration will allow Takeda access to world-leading biological psychiatry research and the related infrastructure across the University, including the

• MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetic and Genomics
• Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute
• National Centre for Mental Health
• Brain Repair and Intracranial Neurotherapeutics Unit.

Enquiries

For more information regarding the Takeda partnership, please contact:

Neurodevelopmental disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affect at least 1 in 10 children.

They are thought to begin in early life and, until recently, most children were thought to grow out of their problems. However, we now know that adults are also affected but not much is known about what these problems look like in adults. To start, we need to know what is “normal” or typical.

Research approach

For the first time, neurodevelopmental problems will be assessed in a group of around 8,000 adults (26 year olds) who have taken part in repeated assessments since they were in the womb. We will also assess anxiety, depression and irritability using the same measures that were used in childhood and adolescence.

We will describe neurodevelopmental problems at age 26, as well as patterns of comorbidity with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems. We will find out how neurodevelopmental problems are linked to child/adolescent neurodevelopmental profiles and work with population cohorts in other countries to ensure our findings are robust.

We will also test the extent to which early life experiences (in the womb and the early years) make a difference to life-long (at least up to age 26) neurodevelopmental health using a variety of methods to test causal inference, including Mendelian Randomization.

We will also examine the contribution of genes. Working across different populations will internationally strengthen this type of research. This work has been funded as a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award.

Proposed outcome

First, we will characterise the natural history of neurodevelopmental disorders from childhood to adult life (aged 4 to 26 years) in a UK population cohort where people have been assessed multiple times at different ages.

We will then investigate the longer-term impacts of early life exposures and risks including links with depression.

Finally, we will apply novel epidemiological methods to infer which early life exposures have causal impacts.

Research team

We are collaborating on this project with researchers at University of Bristol, including:

Co-investigators

• Professor George Davey Smith
• Dr Evie Stergiakouli
• Professor Kate Tilling

Postdoctoral researchers

• Dr Beate Leppert