University of Coimbra joins European project for early diagnosis and monitoring of schizophrenia
The international research consortium has secured €8 million in European funding and will officially launch on 1 January 2025.
The European Horizon project VOLABIOS (Validation and Comparative Multi-Omics Benchmarking of Fluid-Derived Volatilomics Biomarkers for the Prevention and Early Detection of Schizophrenia) has just secured €8 million in European funding and aims to develop advanced, cost-effective diagnostic tools to improve the quality of life of patients and their families and to optimise treatment and monitoring strategies. The project brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of 18 partners from 11 European countries, – including the University of Coimbra –, combining expertise in academia, clinical research, technology, public health, and policy-making.
The project will officially begin on January 1st, 2025, with the mission to revolutionize the early diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia, a chronic mental illness that affects approximately 1% of the global population—around 80 million people—and ranks among the top 15 causes of global disability, shortening life expectancy by 10-15 years.
The University of Coimbra research teams are coordinated by Bruno Manadas - Centre for Neurosciences and Cell Biology (CNC-UC) and Centre for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CIBB); Nuno Madeira - Institute of Medical Psychology, UC Faculty of Medicine, Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT) and Local Health Unit of Coimbra; and Joel Arrais - Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the UC and Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC).
Over the project's four and a half years, the researchers in this multidisciplinary consortium will work on two different fronts: studying the molecular mechanics of schizophrenia, and using new cutting-edge technologies to transform early diagnosis of schizophrenia. Using a multidisciplinary approach and integrating tools from mobile spectrometry and artificial intelligence, the researchers hope that it will be possible to "accurately and rapidly identify chemical and biochemical signals that serve as biomarkers for schizophrenia, improving diagnostic accuracy, reducing timelines and paving the way for earlier intervention, deeper understanding of the disease and better patient outcomes".
The project will be conducted in several stages, including a retrospective analysis of 9 million medical records and a clinical study of more than 3,000 patients from six medical centres across Europe, with regular follow-up over 18 to 36 months to assess long-term changes and validate findings. The research to be carried out at the University of Coimbra will focus on "recruiting patients for the study and sharing the results of proteomics (large-scale protein profiles) in the context of the first psychotic episode", explains Bruno Manadas, a researcher at CNC-UC.
The researcher concludes that by the end of the VOLABIOS project in 2029, "we hope to have developed a breakthrough tool for the early diagnosis of schizophrenia, using molecular information and a set of biomarkers that can be applied through various technologies and artificial intelligence. "