Work packages

Management tasks include:

• Monitoring that the project is implemented properly
• Acting as the intermediary for all communications between the beneficiaries and the EC
• Requesting and reviewing any documents or information required by the EC and verify their completeness and correctness
• Submitting the deliverables and reports to the EC in accordance with the timing and conditions set out in the grant agreement
• Receiving payments from the EC and distributing the payments to the beneficiaries without unjustified delay

It has the following objectives:

• Offer a secure, scalable, and existing data analysis infrastructure, the Digital Research Environment (DRE) with an integrative data management and harmonization plan
• Harmonise and curate phenotypic, genomic, epigenomic, and neuroimaging data
• Provide support and resources to facilitate open science practices
• Establish and enact a viable, solvent, and long-term plan for data and infrastructure (re)use

The specific objectives of WP3 are to:

• Develop methods using within-family genomic data and publish analysis pipelines
• Estimate stability and change in genetic nurture effects throughout the life course
• Identify mechanisms underlying risk transmission and resilience factors
• Test whether findings from the general population generalise to diagnosed cases

Both methodological approaches and applied findings from WP3 will be communicated to WP4 and WP5 for integration with epigenetic and neuroimaging data, respectively, and where WP3 identifies factors moderating risk, they will be treated as potential resilience factors in WP7.

WP4 assembles world-leading birth cohorts with DNAm measured across development and will create a large neonatal biobank of circulating miRNAs. Findings will be validated using data from the PACE consortium and familial high-risk offspring data.

The specific objectives are to:

• Map genetic and environmental routes of intergenerational transmission linking parental mental illness to offspring epigenome
• Identify epigenetic markers of ‘transmission load’ as predictors of offspring outcomes
• Establish whether epigenetic patterns mediate parental mental illness effects on child mental health
• Identify epigenetic signatures associated with resilience to parental mental illness
• Quantify epigenetic contribution to sex differences in the intergenerational transmission of mental illness

Promising epigenetic markers identified in WP4 will be communicated to WP7 for multimodal integration and validation as well as WP6 for experimental testing in animal models.

The specific objectives are to:

• Collect offspring and parental neuroimaging data in families with parental severe mental illness
• Identify neuroimaging markers of transmission load in childhood as predictors of mental health outcome in adolescence
• Characterise the role of parental brain metrics in offspring brain metrics and mental health
• Explore how genetic and environmental routes of transmission of parental mental health problems to offspring relate to brain features (from WP3) in childhood and adolescence

WP5 tasks will generate brain-based predictors that will be propagated to WP6 (experimental animal models) and WP7 (multimodal integration and prediction).

The specific objectives are to:

• Evaluate the contribution of social and molecular factors to intergenerational transmission.
• Assess the causal implication of oocytes, their transcriptome and epigenome in transmission
• Examine the reversibility of symptoms and blockade of their transmission by intervention
• Distinguish contributions of genetic and environmental determinants in transmission of risk

Promising epigenetic and neuroimaging markers identified in WP6 will be readily communicated to WP7 for multimodal integration and validation, as well as WPs3-5 for advanced causal inference testing in the human cohorts.

• Meaningful and efficient fusion of multi-modal data from multiple neuroimaging modalities and non-imaging biological and behavioural levels of investigation as well as across genomics and neuroimaging
• Translation of group-statistical patterns to the prospective prediction of mental health for individuals at high familial risk
• Novel and flexible quantification of resilience to mental health problems and generation of new hypotheses of causal mechanisms underlying risk and resilience of mental health problems

The specific objectives of WP8 are to:

• Review scientific literature on ethical and social issues in the process of development and use of prediction tools for mental disorders
• Map and analyse attitudes of patients, their families, and patient organisations towards prediction of onset and outcome of mental disorders
• Explore ethical and social issues in prediction of onset and outcome of mental disorders from the point of view of mental health care professionals
• Develop ethical guidelines for professionals on use of prediction tools for mental disorders
• Ensure compliance with the research ethics principles and requirements in FAMILY consortium

The specific objectives of WP9 are to:

• Create platforms and materials for dissemination, training and communication ensuring open access and reproducibility of research outputs
• Systematically share new scientific knowledge and tools as early and widely as possible
• Inform and reach out to society and show the activities performed and the benefits of FAMILY for citizens
• Involve all relevant knowledge actors including patients, mental health care professionals, policy makers in the mental health care domain and end-users in the co-creation of ethical guidelines, together with WP8.
• Ensure collaboration and synergy with relevant other activities in the field and sustainability of new knowledge
• Foster sustainability beyond the project end and standardisation of results
• Support the development of skills and capacities in mental health research, as well as accelerating the take-up and use of scientific evidence, new technologies and best practices