Boehringer Ingelheim, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to develop treatments for people with mental health conditions

One in eight people are currently living with a serious mental health condition worldwide, and one in two people will experience such a condition in their lifetime. Cognitive impairment is one of the core characteristics of mental health conditions, which impacts people’s problem-solving skills, attention and memory and can impede working, studying, and living independently. There are currently no treatments for cognitive impairment.

Many people with mental health conditions suffer from sleep disturbances, characterized by reduced sleep spindle density in the electroencephalogram (EEG), that interferes with sleep-dependent memory consolidation, which is crucial for normal cognitive functioning. This can aggravate cognitive impairment and potentially other learning and memory deficits. Deficient function of specific ion channels is linked to these sleep disturbances. Through this new collaboration, Boehringer and the Broad Institute will work on treatments that can potentially normalize sleeping patterns and, ideally, improve cognitive functioning.

“The team at Broad has made groundbreaking strides in understanding the unique role of these ion channels. This opens up a completely new way to potentially tackle cognitive impairment, a condition for which there are no treatments currently available,” said Hugh Marston, Ph.D., Head of CNS Diseases Research at Boehringer Ingelheim. “This new approach complements our portfolio, which seeks to address cognitive impairment in schizophrenia via a different pathway. This may enable more precise differentiation and segmentation of patients and potentially provide better mental health solutions to help ease the burden of this condition.”

Jen Q. Pan, Ph.D., Institute Scientist and Director, Translational Neurobiology at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute said, “We look forward to further advancing the preclinical compounds developed at the Broad. Collaborating with Boehringer Ingelheim to address cognitive impairment is a significant step toward our shared mission of providing innovative solutions for unmet needs of patients with mental illnesses.”

“The Stanley Center is dedicated to understanding the biological mechanisms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in order to develop therapies that improve the quality of life for people living with these conditions,” said Morgan Sheng, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Director of the Stanley Center. “We are excited to collaborate with Boehringer Ingelheim to translate these findings into potential new medicines.”

As part of the partnership, in addition to research funding, the Broad Institute will receive an upfront payment and potential development, regulatory and sales milestone payments of up to USD 126.5 million, plus tiered royalties on future Boehringer Ingelheim product sales.