10117358Psychiatry Consortium: Accelerating Medicines Discovery for Mental HealthClosedDepartment for Science, Innovation & TechnologyInnovate UKThere is an urgent need for improved mental health therapeutics, underscored by the staggering economic impact, estimated at £117.9 billion annually in the UK. In spite of the recognised unmet need, there are a lack of clinical assets in late-stage pipelines for mental health conditions. This is because there are significant barriers to innovation, (e.g., accurate models of the blood-brain-barrier, lack of understanding of distinct patient populations) leading to high failure rates once therapeutic assets reach the clinic. Our national R&D platform, called the 'Psychiatry Consortium' will provide a collaborative platform, bringing together partners from pharma, SMEs, charities, and academia to co-develop drug discovery technologies that will address 'innovation barriers' within mental health drug discovery - dismantling bottlenecks and enabling the development of new therapeutics. These innovation barriers will be identified during the seed corn funding stage and transformed into what we call 'Grand Challenges' -- which will be a collection of innovation streams bringing together diverse partners to co-develop enabling drug discovery technologies.