Pr. Belinda Lennox and Dr Adam Al-Diwani<\/strong> (University of Oxford, UK) & Dr Laurent Groc<\/strong> (CNRS \/ University of Bordeaux, France) are laureates. Their project explores a promising hypothesis: what if psychoses are caused by immune system dysfunction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some forms of psychosis appear abruptly, present atypical symptoms, and respond poorly to conventional treatments. The project explores a promising hypothesis: what if these psychoses are caused by immune system dysfunction? In these cases, the body may produce autoantibodies that mistakenly target brain cells, disrupting their function and leading to autoimmune psychosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objective:<\/strong> To identify biological signatures of patients whose psychosis has an immune origin, enabling the development of targeted immunological therapies alongside standard psychiatric treatments. The prize will allow to build a strong collaborative environment between Oxford University and CNRS-University of Bordeaux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How?<\/strong> In Oxford: human neurons grown in the lab from stem cells to directly observe whether antibodies present in patients\u2019 blood attack brain cells. In Bordeaux: super-resolution microscopy to detect and study the effects of these autoantibodies at the nanoscopic level, offering unprecedented insight into the biological mechanisms involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Launched in November 2025 as part of the France-UK mental health biomarker consortium, the Precision Minde Prize supports collaborative research projects between the two countries aimed at identifying and validating biomarkers for the stratification of mental disorders. The winners were selected by an independent scientific panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than one billion people are affected by mental illness. Conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia\u2026 are among the leading causes of disability worldwide and are associated with reduction in life expectancy by 10 to 20 years. Despite their prevalence, diagnosis is often delayed and treatments remain insufficiently personalized, largely due to the lack of objective and quantifiable biomarkers, such as blood, digital, or brain imaging markers, that would allow precise patient stratification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To help address this challenge, Wakam and the FondaMental Foundation, in partnership with the NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration, created the Precision Mind Prize within this Franco-British consortium. This initiative builds on the success of similar collaborative efforts dedicated to biomarker research in neurodegenerative diseases, such as the Dementia Discovery Fund, which has contributed to the identification of blood biomarkers for Alzheimer\u2019s and Parkinson\u2019s diseases. Psychiatry now has the opportunity to achieve comparable breakthroughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Press Release from Wakam and the FondaMental Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the immune system attacks the brain: detecting autoimmune psychosis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-award","category-whats-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1124"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1137,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions\/1137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iins.u-bordeaux.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-buni.onlc.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2026\/04\/Precision-mind-price-1024x688.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhen the immune system attacks the brain: detecting autoimmune psychosis<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
About the Prize<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n