India’s first repository of major psychiatric disorders, CALM-Brain, launched in Bengaluru

Researchers at the Rohini Nilekani Centre for Brain and Mind (CBM), a partnership between the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) – TIFR, have developed CALM-Brain, a first-of-its-kind digital repository of data in India on brain structure and function from a range of psychiatric disorders.

According to the researchers, the database, built on Indian patient data, will be made open source, thereby opening it up for clinicians and researchers aiming to study neuropsychiatric disorders and to better understand disease onset, progression and underlying biological changes leading to disease symptoms.

This, they feel, could help transform the understanding of mental disorders and provide better diagnosis and plan personalised treatments for patients. 

Datasets on five disorders

CALM-Brain collects clinical, neuro-imaging, behavioural, genetic and other datasets on five disorders – addiction, bipolar disorder, dementia, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia.

The dataset is also linked to a biorepository of stem cells, which can be used to perform biology research in psychiatry to understand the origins of such severe mental illnesses.

Initiated in 2016 as part of the Accelerator program for Discovery in Brain disorders using Stem cells (ADBS project) jointly funded by the Department of Biotechnology and the Pratiksha Trust, the repository contains data of over 2,000 participants from 900 families. 

By studying such large numbers of families with both mental illness-affected and unaffected members, scientists hope to come up with robust methods of identifying key neurocognitive biomarkers. This could potentially help diagnose mental disorders at an early stage, when intervention is most likely to be effective and eventually help develop targeted therapy.

Identifying biological markers

“Given how complex the brain as an organ is and how our behavioural responses are continuously modulated based on prior experience and various physicochemical factors, only further fundamental research can help gain mechanistic insights to various psychiatric disorders. Large data sets being made available on both affected and unaffected individuals in a family would help us to accelerate discovery and develop more effective preventive and therapeutic interventions,” said L.S. Shashidhara, Director, NCBS.

Prof. Y.C. Janardhan Reddy, CBM coordinator at CBM-NIMHANS, noted that the primary goal of the project was to identify biological markers of severe psychiatric illnesses, which cut across traditional diagnostic frameworks.

“In addition, we will try to identify fundamental biological mechanisms of the disease and medication response,” he said. 

Collaborative effort

Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNP), launched the repository on March 25, 2026. “A data repository like CALM-Brain can only come together through the collaborative effort of multiple people and institutions. This is a moment to recognise and celebrate the power of diverse stakeholders coming together,” said Ms. Nilekani.