RE-MEND

Building REsilience against MEntal illness during ENDocrine-sensitive life stages

Overview: To improve citizens’ mental health, today’s symptom-based diagnoses need to be complemented with biological criteria accounting for individual and sex differences. The EU-funded research project RE-MEND (Building Resilience against Mental illness during Endocrine-sensitive life stages) focuses on four critical life stages in which changes in endocrine signalling, including sex hormones, could influence an individual’s susceptibility to mental illness: early life, puberty, the peripartum period, and transition into old age. The project will integrate data from extensive population-based longitudinal cohort studies to unveil risk and protective factors as well as biological patterns influencing mental states across these life stages. Moreover, RE-MEND will combine epidemiological with experimental studies, and use advanced biostatistics, machine learning and AI for data integration and novel biomarker and drug target discoveries. Prof. Joëlle Rüegg acts as project coordinator and Dr. Emmanouil Tsakoumis as project manager, whereas the EpiTox group is also involved in specific Tasks of the project.

Funding source: HORIZON-RIA, European Commission

Responsible researchers: MSc. Caroline Agrillo, Dr. Emmanouil Tsakoumis, Prof. Joëlle Rüegg

Main collaborators: Dr. Philipp Antczak (University of Cologne, Germany) & the RE-MEND consortium, consisting of total 17 organisations in the EU, the UK, U.S.A. and Bangladesh