Mechanism-INDexed Machine learning for Advancing personalized treatment strategy and medication side-effects Prevention in Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder (MIND-MAPS)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Dusan Hirjak; Professor Emanuel Schwarz, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Biological Psychiatry
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572498871

Schizophrenia (SZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD) together account for 7.3 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which accounts for 2.5% of total global DALYs, and over €212 billion annually in costs across Europe, encompassing both healthcare expenses and lost productivity. A complex task in clinical practice is to select the most effective medication that induces few or no side effects. Choosing the right antipsychotic and antidepressant drug for SZ and MDD patients requires a comprehensive assessment of symptom severity, comorbid somatic disorders and their treatment as well as past treatment responses. To address this, MIND-MAPS will implement a highly innovative biomarker development, validation and implementation strategy that builds on the hypothesis that prevention-targeted stratification profits from the integration of risk and treatment-relevant neurobiology. This interdisciplinary project has three main goals: First, we will develop a computational framework to identify neurobiological dimensions associated with psychotropic drug treatment (antipsychotics and antidepressants). Second, we will externally validate the drug activity-associated SZ and MDD signatures with regards to (a) treatment outcome and (b) side-effect vulnerability signature identification, as well as neurobiological characterization of subgroups. Third, MIND-MAPS will leverage substantial expertise in the clinical translation of biological diagnostic classifiers towards the development of an implementation strategy for the identified biomarker signatures. For this purpose, we will establish a feasible multiparametric test paradigm based on clinical, neuroimaging and genetic variables for individual therapeutic response prediction and to test its acceptance and feasibility on newly recruited ~120 SZ and ~120 MDD patients in a longitudinal setting (3 months follow-up). With this synergistic work program, MIND-MAPS will provide the basis for biologically-informed clinical tools for improved personalized prevention and care of SZ and MDD patients.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants