$2.5 million funding to establish research centre dedicated to bipolar disorder

$2.5 million funding to establish research centre dedicated to bipolar disorder

2 September 2022

Professor Sue Cotton

People impacted by bipolar disorder (BD) are set to benefit from improved care and outcomes thanks to a new research centre led by an Orygen researcher.

Poor treatment of BD, driven by a lack of evidence-based treatments and poor use of existing therapies, means innovative research and its translation into real-world practice is urgently needed. This is where The Centre of Research Excellence in Bipolar Disorders (CORE-BD) comes in.

CORE-BD has received $2.5 million in government funding over five years through the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) 2022 Centres of Research Excellence scheme.

The centre will bring together the best and brightest BD researchers to explore early intervention and getting the best out of treatment, ensuring the findings are implemented into practice to improve the lives of people experiencing BD.

Orygen’s Professorial Research Fellow and CORE-BD’s Chief Investigator, Professor Sue Cotton, said the centre’s collaborative approach could have far-reaching benefits.

“BD is a pervasive and debilitating disorder, and a leading cause of disability due to economic, social, familial and individual burden,” Professor Cotton said.

“This new multi-disciplinary centre will raise awareness of BD in the community and inform clinical practice, with the goal of reducing delays in diagnosis and improving outcomes for people impacted by the disorder.

“CORE-BD will bridge the gap so that BD researchers in Australia are connected to create a ‘whole greater than the sum of its parts’, and the flow-on effects of that could be enormous.”