{"id":197806,"date":"2026-04-23T16:10:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T14:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/?p=197806"},"modified":"2026-04-23T16:22:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T14:22:44","slug":"laurent-groc-laureate-of-the-precision-mind-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/laurent-groc-laureate-of-the-precision-mind-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurent Groc, laureate of the “Precision Mind” prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Dr Laurent Groc (CNRS, IINS) is one of the 2026 recipients of the Precision Mind Prize for biomarkers in psychiatry for a project co-led with Pr Belinda Lennox and Dr Adam Al-Diwani<\/strong> (University of Oxford, United Kingdom).<\/p>\n

Launched in November 2025 as part of the Franco-British consortium on biomarker research in psychiatry, this prize recognizes collaborative research projects between the two countries focused on the identification and validation of biomarkers for mental illnesses. The winners were selected by an independent scientific committee. The award is presented by Wakam, the NIHR\u2019s collaborative network for translational research on mental health, and the FondaMental Foundation.<\/p>\n

Presentation of the project<\/h3>\n

When the immune system attacks the brain: detecting autoimmune psychosis<\/strong><\/p>\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

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

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

About the prize<\/h3>\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

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

Source \/ More details<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

for a project co-led with Pr Belinda Lennox and Dr Adam Al-Diwani (University of Oxford, United Kingdom). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":146901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-neurocampus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197815,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197806\/revisions\/197815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}