The Singapore flagship programme in translational and clinical research in psychosis

This paper describes the rationale, aims and development of the Singapore Translational and Clinical Research in Psychosis, which is a 5-year programme.

The authors provide a selective review of the pertinent findings from the clinical, neuropsychological, genetics and neuroimaging studies on high-risk population and how they were factored in the hypotheses and design of this translational clinical research programme.

This programme, which draws upon the previous work of various groups and the experience of the investigators of this consortium, comprises three interlinked studies. The first is a genome-wide association and copy number variation analysis using the diagnostic phenotype of schizophrenia and cognitive phenotypes, and a joint genome-wide analysis performed by combining our data with other datasets to increase the power to detect genetic risk factors. The second is a prospective study of a large group of individuals who are assessed to be at ultra-high risk of psychosis, and the third is a randomized controlled trial to improve neurocognition in patients with schizophrenia.

The convergence of various factors including the unique structured characteristics of the Singaporean society, the presence of political will with availability of funding and the established research infrastructure make it possible to accrue the sample size for adequate power to elucidate biomarkers of disease risk and resilience.