Stanley Family Foundation renews commitment to accelerate psychiatric research at Broad Institute

(Press-News.org) The Stanley Family Foundation has renewed its commitment to psychiatric research at the Broad Institute, bringing its total investment to more than $1 billion. This funding, including their newest commitment of $280 million to the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, is opening up new paths to urgently needed therapies for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 

For decades, scientists have struggled to understand the biological causes of psychiatric disorders as patients continue to face both stigma and limited treatment options. Schizophrenia, in particular, is a leading cause of mortality in young people, and no drugs have been developed based on an understanding of disease mechanisms. But starting in 2007, the Stanley family and the Broad Institute together bet that human genetics would be the key to understanding psychiatric conditions and ultimately designing new treatments — and this bet is paying off. 

“The Stanley Family Foundation has established a new model for philanthropic impact that has transformed an entire field of health research,” said Todd Golub, director of the Broad Institute. “From the outset, Ted and Vada Stanley predicted that taking a programmatic, team-based approach to solving a big problem might catalyze global progress toward the understanding of mental illness. Today, psychiatric genetics is a vibrant field with scientists collaborating across institutions around the globe, thanks largely to the Stanley Foundation's long-term vision and the transformative impact their philanthropy has enabled. This recent gift again demonstrates their commitment to improve the lives of so many people through groundbreaking scientific research.”

Accelerating the path to clinical impact

Scientists at the Stanley Center have played a critical role in reshaping this field, working with researchers internationally to make discoveries that have revolutionized our understanding of psychiatric conditions and point to potential therapeutic advances. 

Human genetics data from the Stanley Center has provided unprecedented clues to the brain biology underlying schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. To date, Broad scientists have played a lead role in identifying dozens of genes for schizophrenia and bipolar in coordinated, systematic efforts, and the knowledge base continues to grow. To deliver these discoveries, the Stanley Center has built large data-sharing consortia and assembled and shared the world’s largest collection of genetic data for psychiatric research. 

The Stanley Center knits together a community of more than 100 scientists with expertise spanning human genetics, computational biology, neurobiology, stem cell biology, chemistry, and clinical psychiatry to accelerate the path from gene discovery to clinical impact. They are driving the field forward in unraveling the causes and discovering key biological mechanisms of psychiatric conditions. They have also launched an initiative to identify biomarkers for these conditions, essential tools for improved diagnostics, drug development, and clinical care.

Research teams at the Stanley Center are using the latest genetic data to develop new, more accurate disease models for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, including stem cell models and animal models that are based on human genetics. These tools enable scientists to deeply study the specific pathways involved in psychiatric disorders and test the effects of genetic and chemical perturbations. 

Advanced spatial profiling tools and other “omics” technologies are also providing unprecedented resolution into the molecular landscape of the brain, identifying the specific cells and brain regions associated with these conditions, further accelerating the pace of scientific discovery. 

To ensure that each of these efforts will make a meaningful difference for patients, the Center is strategically fostering industry partnerships and its own drug discovery projects. 

“My parents envisioned a world where disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar are treated with the same molecular precision as cancer and heart disease, aiming to transform these conditions into manageable biological realities rather than sources of social stigma,” said Jonathan Stanley of the Stanley Family Foundation, and the son of the late Ted and Vada Stanley. “They had the foresight to understand that a revolution in drug discovery would only be possible by understanding the genetics of these conditions. This renewed commitment honors that vision and empowers it to one day be fully realized.”

“The impact and vision of Stanley Center research is felt worldwide,” said Naomi Wray, professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford. “Researchers at the Stanley Center have been at the forefront of assembling the large and diverse cohorts required to make the genetic discoveries that underpin international research in psychiatric genetics. Beyond this, they have pioneered statistical and computational methods needed for analysis of big genomic data and have shown exceptional creativity in developing experimental paradigms that reflect the polygenic complexity of psychiatric disorders. I am delighted to learn that the Stanley Foundation will renew its funding.”

“For over a decade we have deeply valued our partnership with the Broad Institute,” said Ken Duckworth, chief medical officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We have a desperate need to better understand the root causes of these conditions, and the work going on at Broad's Stanley Center gives patients and their loved ones some of the best hope that we have. I am delighted that the Stanley Foundation is continuing their support.”

An early vision to transform a field

Ted and Vada Stanley’s passion for helping people with severe psychiatric conditions began decades ago when their son Jonathan was stricken with severe bipolar disorder while in college. While Jonathan manages his illness with the help of lithium, first used to treat patients with mental health challenges in 1949, the Stanleys were struck by how limited treatment options were for most patients, spurring them eventually to place a big bet on human genetics as the best path to more effective therapies. Their partnership with the Broad Institute began with a goal of finding better treatments for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder by uncovering the genetic clues to their underlying biology. In 2007, Broad formally launched the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, led initially by Edward Scolnick, Broad core member emeritus.

In 2014, researchers from the Stanley Center and collaborating institutions published the largest genomic study on any psychiatric disorder at the time, studying more than 150,000 people and identifying more than 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia. 

In 2016, Stanley Center researchers led a landmark study digging further into this genetic analysis and revealing that a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia is increased if they inherit specific variants in C4, an immune system gene related to synaptic pruning. This study marked a new insight into the biological basis of schizophrenia. The acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health at the time, Bruce Cuthbert, described the study as “a crucial turning point in the fight against mental illness.” 

Further studies in 2022 of larger cohorts and using genome sequencing technologies identified additional genes associated with schizophrenia and the first strong genetic risk factor for bipolar disorder. Two international consortia, both led by Stanley Center researchers, were integral to this work: the SCHEMA (Schizophrenia Exome Sequencing Meta-analysis) consortium, which has collected samples from 143,000 individuals and analyzed the DNA of 75,000 of them, and the BipEx (Bipolar Exome) consortium. 

“When I look at how the field of psychiatric genetics has evolved over the last 15 years, I’m astounded,” said Morgan Sheng, co-director of the Stanley Center. “It’s an incredibly exciting moment — one where science, technology, and collaboration are finally coming together to yield new insights and bring real hope to people living with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It’s about scale, ambition, and purpose — and the conviction that psychiatric illness deserves the same rigor, resources, and therapeutic options as any other field of medicine.”

“Tireless work has gone into identifying genes relevant to schizophrenia and bipolar, and each one of them suggests an avenue for launching biological inquiry,” said Ben Neale, co-director of the Stanley Center. “Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are some of the most complex, vexing disorders that humans experience. Now that we have such large datasets, we know which genes matter. With such a compelling path forward, the entire field is more motivated than ever. The challenge is immense, but so is the opportunity. I am beyond grateful to the Foundation for their support for this work.”

“Through such remarkably generous philanthropy, we have been able to take on high-risk science at Broad and at the same time inspire and organize many collaborative, worldwide  discovery efforts that have, at last, put psychiatric research on a strong modern footing based in genetics, brain cell atlases, and cutting-edge neurobiology,” said Steve Hyman, director of the Program in Brain Health at Broad and former director of the Stanley Center. “This progress, which is providing insights into the neural mechanisms of psychiatric disorders, has now permitted us to launch well-grounded new forays into translational neuroscience with the goal of improving lives.”

“Discovering the root biological — including the genetic — causes of major neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder has been among the most vexing and challenging problems in all of biomedical research,” said Steve Paul, professor of psychiatry and neurology at Washington University of St. Louis School of Medicine and former executive vice president for science and technology at Eli Lilly. “Without such an understanding, highly effective treatments will simply not be possible. The scientists at Broad Institute’s Stanley Center have paved the way for these desperately needed treatments by developing cutting-edge genetic tools to unravel the complex biology of these serious brain disorders.” Paul is also a partner at Third Rock Ventures.

“The Stanley Family Foundation’s visionary support has made the Stanley Center a global epicenter for neuropsychiatry innovation,” said Husseini Manji, professor at Oxford University and adjunct professor at Yale University. “As the former global head of Neuroscience at Johnson and Johnson, and a current member of the scientific advisory board, I have seen firsthand the transformative power of their collaborative model. This renewal is a powerful investment in a future where serious mental illness is met with definitive treatments based on underlying biology.”
 

About the Broad Institute 

Broad Institute is an independent, non-profit research organization whose mission is to understand the roots of disease and close the gap between new biological insights and impact for patients.

Founded in 2004 by the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, the Broad Institute exists at the intersection of scientific disciplines, convening scientists and other experts from genomics, cell biology, chemistry, engineering, neuroscience, therapeutics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, computational biology, and public health. The Broad Institute engages thousands of scientists from MIT, Harvard, Harvard’s primary teaching hospitals, other academic institutions, and leading corporate partners in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, all of whom share the goal of translating research findings into safe and effective therapeutic interventions for all common and rare diseases.

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