PRISM

Psychiatric Ratings using Intermediate Stratified Markers: providing quantitative biological measures to facilitate the discovery and development of new treatments for social and cognitive deficits in AD, SZ, and MD

Summary

Many behavioural symptoms are common to different psychiatric and neurological conditions. Social dysfunction, for example, which commonly presents as people avoiding contact with people and activities that they normally enjoy, is a common early symptom of many neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and major depressive disorder. However, the underlying biological causes of symptoms like social dysfunction are still poorly understood, and there has always been a question mark as to whether or not the underlying cause differs from one disease to another, despite appearing the same on the surface. The PRISM project wanted to get to the root biological causes of these symptoms in the hope that it will ultimately provide leads for new drugs, which are sorely lacking for these diseases. The project partners carried out a range of tests on patients with neuropsychiatric disorders in a bid to determine which biological parameters can be matched with specific clinical symptoms like social dysfunction. They identified quantitative biological parameters that can be used to group neuropsychiatric patients into different clusters, making headway in our understanding of three of the most prevalent brain disorders in Europe, the economic burden of which is huge. They also created and tested new technologies that can passively gather data from smartphones to measure behaviour and sensory processing deficits related to social functioning. Digital biomarkers gathered using the technology have enormous promise for future research and have received encouraging signs from the European regulator. The work of PRISM leaves behind yet more evidence that neuropsychiatric disorders are ‘real’, with real biomedical ‘proof’, just like physical illnesses. This is helping to reduce the stigma associated with mental disorders. The project has received confirmation of a follow-on funding for a new project to build on the work of PRISM.

The underlying biological causes of neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and major depressive disorder are very poorly understood. The majority of people with these mental health conditions are still diagnosed based on symptoms alone because there is a lack of objective and easy-to-measure biological signs of the illness. A good point of comparison is diabetes: the symptoms are caused by high levels of sugar in the blood. Measuring this parameter, therefore, gives doctors a solid clue to help them make a diagnosis.

Many neuropsychiatric diseases share the same outward symptoms, but the difficulty in finding a medicine that works leads to the conclusion that the biological causes could be very different. The big question is: are different processes being affected but producing the same symptoms? Or is it that the exact same processes are being disturbed in some way, but for whatever reason, they are presenting in different patients completely differently? This lack of clarity has caused a dramatic slowdown in new drugs being brought to the market. Mental illnesses like those mentioned have for decades been treated with the same list of 100 or so compounds in an empirical manner i.e. keep going until you find something that works.

The symptom in question – social dysfunction

The project partners in PRISM made progress in untangling the ways in which these diseases overlap, by trying to understand and classify them in a quantitative, biological way. They chose to focus on the symptom of social dysfunction, one of the earliest outward signs that can be observed in Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and major depression. It is also considered an early indicator of cognitive deficits. PRISM probed the biological brain systems of traditionally-diagnosed schizophrenic and dementia patients using a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies and then analysed the data blind i.e. without information on the diagnosis, to see if the patients can be clustered into groups based on the underlying impaired brain biology.

Clustering into new groups

165 individuals with schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s disease, as well as a group of healthy controls, underwent a battery of tests. Of 4,330 biological markers picked up from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans (which register blood flow to functioning areas of the brain) and EEG tests (electroencephalograms, which show abnormalities in brain wave activity) along with observations of the participants’ behaviour, 139 markers showed a significant relationship with one of the two diseases, or with the control. More endpoints - 183 in total - showed a significant relationship with measures of social functioning. These new clusters were shown not to equate to existing diagnostic-based categorisation of patients.

The project also carried out genetic testing that revealed 604 genome-wide variants in 19 different places in the chromosome that have an association with social functioning. Further tests using preclinical models, by mirroring the tests carried out on human subjects, now allows the consortium to effectively back-translate the human clinical findings thereby expanding their neurobiological knowledge. This will be done as part of the PRISM 2 project.

Real-world social functioning measurement tools

New technologies played a major role in the PRISM project. Innovative statistical techniques derived insights from the data generated by genetic testing and neuroimaging, which was then consolidated with a wealth of existing clinical data from major European and global disease cohorts. PRISM also created new digital tools that can be used to measure social functioning linked to the neurobiological parameters, going further than the traditional diagnostic classification.

By passively measuring the number of phone calls and chats, location data from GPS signals (indicating outside visits and the length of time spent at home) generated by the participants’ smartphones, they were able to produce new and objective insights into the real-world environment and of a person’s individual social communication and exploration behaviour. This real-world analysis revealed three clusters that did not completely match the initial diagnostic groups, demonstrating the potential for further new classifications.

Regulatory encouragement

The smartphone-based behavioural endpoints developed by the project for measuring social functioning were shown to have potentially wide application in future research. PRISM initiated a dialogue with the Innovation Task Force of the European Medicines Agency with respect to the qualification of potential digital biomarkers for social functioning. The EMA Innovation Task Force provided encouraging feedback and progress is being made toward establishing the app outcomes as qualified biomarkers.

Legacy

PRISM was able to accelerate the discovery and development of new treatments for neuropsychiatric conditions like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease by differentiating these diseases based on the underlying impaired brain biology and showing where they overlap. They have bridged and important translation gap between discovery and validation of biomarkers and the technology that can measure them. They established a network of pre-clinical research sites that can perform high-quality studies, helping pave the way for recognition of social dysfunction as a registrable symptom across disorders. They also offered a new framework to help physicians better inform their patients of the complexity of their illness, leading to better understanding and disease management.

Their work continues to encourage the clinical community to consider neuropsychiatric disorders through a more quantitative lens, influencing patients, carers and the public, and adding to the growing evidence that neuropsychiatric disorders are ‘real’ and that there is demonstrable biomedical proof of their existence, just like physical illnesses. This is helping to reduce the stigma associated with mental disorders. The outline of the work carried out by PRISM was published in a special issue of Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews on the PRISM project.  

Next steps

Funding for the follow-on phase of the PRISM project was granted in 2021. This new funding will allow the project to build on the work of PRISM by replicating their initial clinical findings on new patient cohorts and investigating the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these patient clusters. Major Depressive Disorders will be included as a third indication in the PRISM 2 project.

Achievements & News

The most objective measure of your sociabilty? It’s in your pocket

PRISM is in talks with the EMA on the use of data from smartphones and wearables as biomarkers of social functioning in neuropsychiatric disorders.###

Measuring human social behaviour i.e. interactions with others, or activities outside the home, is usually done via a variety of methods that, despite being used widely in biomedical research, are plagued with problems: interviews, questionnaires and self-rating (or rating by a carer or family member) are subjective, qualitative and usually after-the-fact.

Smartphones and wearables are already collecting reams of data on our physical movements and social activities. The IMI PRISM project looked at which kinds of data from these devices could be considered reliable biomarkers of social functioning. The PRISM team found promising data that measures such as the number of phone calls made, chats, and number of places visited, can be used to better stratify participants. If this can be confirmed, it offers a way of significantly improving clinical trial outcomes, ultimately resulting in better treatments.

The PRISM team is currently in talks with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to establish how they can successfully make this kind of digital phenotyping part of future clinical trials, alongside traditional data-gathering methods and assessments.

Find out more

IMI projects feature in new brochure on the brain and digital technologies

IMI projects are among those featured in a new brochure on how the digital revolution is transforming EU-funded brain research. The brochure, produced by CORDIS, was published to coincide with IMI’s Stakeholder Forum on the same subject. The IMI projects featured are AETIONOMY, EU-AIMS and PRISM. AETIONOMY systematically captures and represents knowledge on neurodegenerative diseases in a computable format that represents causes and effects and that can be analysed using algorithms. EU-AIMS has developed a large autism database, one of the richest of its kind in the world, which has the potential to drastically change the knowledge base for autism. Finally, PRISM has developed a new framework that would help researchers better understand the complexity of neuropsychiatric illness, moving away from current reductive disease classifications, to pave the way for new treatments.

PRISM clinical study on social withdrawal gets underway

The PRISM project’s clinical study on the biological underpinnings of social withdrawal in Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia is now officially underway, as the first patients have had their first clinical visits.### Social withdrawal is a common early symptom of both Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. However, we do not know if the underlying causes of social withdrawal in the two diseases are the same or different. In this study, PRISM scientists will study over 200 people, including people with suspected Alzheimer’s disease, people with schizophrenia, and healthy people (the control group). Participants with the diseases under study will include people who show signs of social withdrawal as well as people who do not. Participants will undergo a range of tests, including brain scans, blood tests and questionnaires. They will also be offered the opportunity to use a smartphone app called BeHapp that measures people’s sociability and social exploration in their daily lives. ‘The ability to precisely link symptoms to underlying neurobiology would not only facilitate the development of better treatments, it would also allow physicians to provide patients and relatives with a better understanding of the complexities and management of their illness,’ said the project. ‘Moreover, there is a growing realisation that psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders overlap by much more than previously thought, and that they may better be described as domains of trans-diagnostic traits rather than separable categories.’

Participants

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EFPIA companies
  • Boehringer Ingelheim Internationalgmbh, Ingelheim, Germany
  • Eli Lilly And Company LTD, Basingstoke, United Kingdom
  • F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Basel, Switzerland
  • Janssen Pharmaceutica Nv, Beerse, Belgium
  • Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland
  • Takeda Development Centre Europe LTD, London, United Kingdom
Universities, research organisations, public bodies, non-profit groups
  • Academisch Ziekenhuis Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands
  • Alma Mater Studiorum - Universita Di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
  • Consorcio Centro De Investigacion Biomedica En Red M.P., Madrid, Spain
  • Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
  • Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
  • Stichting Amsterdam Umc, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Stichting Buro Ecnp, Utrecht, Netherlands
  • Stichting Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • The University Of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
  • Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized companies (<€500 m turnover)
  • Biotrial, Rennes, France
  • Concentris Research Management GMBH, Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany
  • Drug Target Id BV, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • P1vital Limited, Wallingford, United Kingdom
  • Sbgneuro LTD, Thame, United Kingdom
Patient organisations
  • Europese Federatie Van Familieverenigingen Van Psychiatrisch Zieke Personen Ivzw, Leuven, Belgium
Third parties
  • P1vital Products Limited, Wallingford, United Kingdom

Participants
NameEU funding in €
Academisch Ziekenhuis Leiden334 775
Alma Mater Studiorum - Universita Di Bologna100 000
Biotrial350 000
Concentris Research Management GMBH315 000
Consorcio Centro De Investigacion Biomedica En Red M.P.678 450
Drug Target Id BV200 250
Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam100 000
Europese Federatie Van Familieverenigingen Van Psychiatrisch Zieke Personen Ivzw18 563
P1vital Limited766 171
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen2 105 481
Sbgneuro LTD490 500
Stichting Amsterdam Umc775 000
Stichting Buro Ecnp168 500
Stichting Radboud Universiteit840 250
The University Of Exeter90 000
Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht286 645
 
Third parties
NameFunding in €
P1vital Products Limited460 416
 
Total Cost8 080 001