Rohini Nilekani’s trust grants Rs 100 crore to Nimhans to boost research in 5 mental ailments

The Center for Brain and Mind is set to be inaugurated in a few months. The centre that will be co-located at NCBS and Nimhans will function as a research platform.

Nimhans has signed an agreement with the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies where it will support research activities at Nimhans for five years.

The multidisciplinary, inter-institutional partnership between Nimhans and National Centre for Biological Sciences (with inStem) will contribute greatly to the broader field of mental health, the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies stated.

“Mental health is an area that demands more attention and support. The recent pandemic brought out this need even more starkly. Through this grant, I hope that a collaboration between two apex institutions of this country will provide globally relevant insights, evidence, and pathways for better treatment for millions of people in India and the world,” founder Rohini Nilekani said.

“The Centre for Brain and Mind hopes to build an ecosystem for the larger community of mental health practitioners. Its research on five critical disorders, which will no doubt be pathbreaking, will be open-sourced to allow more innovation in both academics and practice,” she said.

The Rs-100 crore grant is to facilitate enhanced research in a project that Nimhans along with NCBS and inStem has been working on since 2016 – with initial support from the Department of Biotechnology and the Pratiksha Trust.

The grant will facilitate sharing of research resources around the world, will facilitate the creation of better public awareness, and the generation of a core group of clinician researchers and basic scientists skilled in critical technologies.

“Nimhans has been collaborating with NCBS and inStem to study a large number of families of patients with severe mental illnesses and generate a longitudinal cohort. The in-depth biological and clinical assessment of this cohort has immense potential for breakthrough discoveries,” said Dr Pratima Murthy, Nimhans director.

“The financial support from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies will allow us to pursue long-term research on patients. This will allow insights into mental illness and how it develops and impacts brain function. Such understanding will enable the development of novel medicines,” said Prof L S Shashidhara, NCBS-TIFR director.

The Center for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was inaugurated by PM Modi last year. It focuses on conducting research to provide evidence-based public health interventions to manage age-related brain disorders. In 2014, Infosys Ltd co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan announced a grant of Rs 225 crore from Pratiksha Trust, an NGO he co-founded with his wife Sudha Gopalakrishnan, towards the setting up of the Center for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science.