What will happen in the field of serious mental illness when human need, scientific progress and a major influx of funding converge? Scientists on Tuesday predicted that the world could see the same kind of progress in understanding schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that's been seen in the last decade in the fight against cancer.

That, in turn, could lead to better treatments, earlier diagnosis and more opportunities to head off the emergence of full-blown psychological illness in those at greatest risk.

Such a path forward became evident Tuesday with two new developments: the publication of a scientific article identifying 108 locations on the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia -- the largest-ever genome-association study focused on mental illness -- and the announcement of a philanthropist's $650-million commitment to fuel the search for mental illnesses' biological underpinnings.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday, Eric S. Lander, the founder and president of the Broad Institute, announced that collectibles entrepreneur Ted Stanley had made the record-setting funding commitment. Moved to action by a son's diagnosis of bipolar disorder, the 83-year-old Stanley has promised, now and after his death, to underwrite a vastly expanded hunt for the genetic contributions to and the molecular processes at work insevere mental illness.

The article on the genetic variations seen in schizophrenia was published Monday by the journal Nature. The findings were drawn from the genetic data of about 37,000 people.

That new research came as advances in genetic sequencing are promising to unlock the mysteries of genes' roles in complex chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer and depression. While the roots of "Mendelian" genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease and polycystic kidney disease can be traced to a single gene defect, illnesses such as schizophrenia are likely to spring from many genetic variations, interacting with one another and the environment.

Uncovering the genetic contributions to mental illness, therefore, will be a far more difficult task. To glean patterns from large-population studies, researchers will need newly available techniques to analyze whole genomes and to process massive amounts of data fast and cheaply. Making the task more difficult: Genetic variations very likely interact with such factors as poor parenting, childhood trauma and adolescent substance abuse to produce full-blown psychiatric disease.

Over the last decade, the combination of major research funding and advances in genomic understanding have begun to shed new light on the molecular processes that allow cancers to gain a foothold, and that has led to better, more targeted cancer treatments.

Backed by a full cast of pioneers in genetic research, Lander said, it may take a decade or more but that Stanley's funding for research on psychiatric disease could do the same for illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

"We're poised for real advances here," said National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins in a taped tribute shown Tuesday. "We're not just going to wring our hands here. We're going to do something."

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New funds jump-start mental illness research

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