Leiden University Medical Center

The Department of Psychiatry is part of the Leiden Univeristy Medical Center. The LUMC is a modern center for research, education and patient care with a high profile and a strong scientific and international reputation. It’s unique research practice, ranging from pure fundamental medical research to applied clinical research, places LUMC among world leaders. The intensive collaboration between LUMC, Leiden University and the large Leiden Bio Science Park, with amongst others the Center for Human Drug Research (CHDR), creates unique possibilities for medical innovation. The LUMC department of psychiatry has specialised inpatient and outpatient clinics for mood and anxiety disorders and clinical and experimental research units. Research focusses on the treatment, phenomenology and neurobiology of disorders of emotion regulation and their interactions over the lifespan. In 2014 the department of psychiatry published 80% of its papers in a top 25% journal. As described in more detail below, the department and its close collaborators have ample experience in conducting clinical studies and cohort studies with extensive phenotypical and neurobiological assessments. This fits well with the main tasks foreseen for the LUMC in the PRISM proposal:
In 2002, the Leiden University Medical Center and the large regional Mental Health Provider Rivierduinen have implemented Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) in routine clinical care for patients with Mood, Anxiety and Somatoform disorders. In the Leiden ROM project, extensive baseline assessments (comprising a standardized diagnostic interview, administration of rating scales and several self-reported measures, covering symptomatology, functioning etc) are performed in 80% of all intakes, with follow-up assessments in those starting treatment. Dedicated Web-based software has been developed to assist in this task.The collected data are used in scientific analyses, measurement of the quality of care, and benchmarking. Research with ROM data encompasses psychometrics, epidemiology, phenotyping, neurobiology and genotyping (MASH cohort), and treatment efficiency. Furthermore, the ROM infrastructure can be used for patient selection. Baseline data and follow-up data of over 10,000 patients are available. We have extended ROM and the MASH bank by including a cohort of 1,300 subjects from the general population.
Since 2004, the department is also one of the three main assessment and recruitment centers for the large 10-year longitudinal NESDA study (Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety, www.nesda.nl). NESDA combines extensive phenotyping of 2896 subjects with neurobiological and physiological assessments, including genetic profiling, neuropsychological testing and MRI. The department is also a main assessment and recruitment center for several comparable multi-center cohort studies, such as the Netherlands Study on Depression in Old age (NESDO) and the Netherlands Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Association Study (NOCDA).
The department is actively involved in the interfaculty Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC, see www.libc-leiden.nl) and in the multidisciplinary LUMC Leiden Center for Translational Neuroscience (LCTN). The LIBC and LCTN provide an excellent infrastructure and expertise in MRI and EEG, and in basic and clinical neuroscience approaches. Furthermore, close collaboration with the CHDR (Center for Human Drug Research) via Prof. van Gerven, research director CNS at the CHDR and research staff member at our department adds to expertise in designing and conducting clinical trials.
The Leiden University Medical Center’s (LUMC) Department of Psychiatry will 1) participate with cohorts of well characterized patients in the data mining based on available clinical proxies for social withdrawal, sensory processing and attention (WP 2 and 5), 2) serve as a ‘deep phenotyping’ site (WP 4) and 3) as a potential clinical centre for the use and involvement in regulatory discussions on PRISM developed biomarkers (WP7).