The Brain Health Institute is a new scientific research platform of the Shanghai Mental Health Center that offers vital research and innovation support to researchers within and outside the Center who are interested in a platform-oriented scientific approach. The platform can collect basic, clinical and translational research resources and give researchers ready access to a three-in-one system of clinical data support, experimental platform sharing, and innovation and translation promotion. Based on a wealth of clinical resources, the platform can efficiently address patients’ clinical problems and treatment needs by drawing upon evidence-based medical research, basic research exploration, and clinical research verification and transformation.

The basic research platform of Brain Health Institute is based on the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Serious Psychiatric Disorders. The translational research platform is based on national major special projects, and the clinical research platform is based on the Shanghai Psychiatric Psychological Clinical Medicine Research Center. Together, these form a three-dimensional research support system with a cross-platform resource integration, covering molecular biology, cell biology, animal behavior, isolated/in vivo electrophysiology, confocal imaging, human brain electrophysiology and magnetic resonance, etc. In addition, The Academy of Brain Health is a psychiatric research platform with the broadest coverage of research directions and the most comprehensive range of disciplines in the mental health field in China.

As for research resources, a research neuroimaging data center and a biological sample library database have been established, and through informatization docking, a research platform for the interconnection of neuroimaging data, biological sample data, and scientific research clinical data has been developed, providing a solid basis for the development of basic and clinical research.

In recent years, basic research, translational research and clinical research platforms have become highly integrated with increased scientific research resource sharing and communication, forming a profound scientific research heritage. In the past five years, the Shanghai Mental Health Center has undertaken 178 research projects at the municipal level or above, including 89 national projects with total funding of 301,271,900 RMB. It has received the following awards: 6 national and provincial (municipal) level awards, 1 Outstanding Youth Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 6 Shanghai Leading Talents, 7 Shanghai Outstanding Academic Leaders, 2 Shanghai Young Top Talents, 7 Shanghai Pujiang Talents, 6 Shanghai Young Science and Technology Star Projects, 19 Shanghai Young Science and Technology Talent Sailing Program, and more than 40 other provincial, ministerial and committee level talent projects, published 473 SCI-indexed papers, including 15 articles with an impact factor greater than 10 that were published in top academic journals such as JAMA Psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Molecular Psychiatry, Nature Communications, etc. A total of 54 patents have been applied for, nine of them have been approved; 6 intellectual property transformations have been performed, with a cumulative contract value of 52.1644 million yuan. I have also published a total of 53 textbooks and monographs,7 guidelines and consensus papers, and participated in formulating 13 laws and standards.

The Brain Health Institute will continue to take advantage of platform integrations at National Center for Mental Disorders (Shanghai). With its strong scientific foundation, the Academy attracts talent from all over the world and provides a high-level research environment for the study of brain health. In addition to building a multidisciplinary research platform, the Academy collaborates with colleagues across the country to promote the development of brain health research and clinical applications in China.

President of Brain Health Institute            

Yifeng Xu