Bradley Hospital has secured Phase 2 funding from the National Institutes of Health to continue and expand its research into sleep, circadian rhythms and youth mental health, building on a center that first launched in 2021. The new round of funding will fuel advanced lab instrumentation, a new biospecimen laboratory and expanded mentorship for junior researchers at the hospital's Center for Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
The grant flows through the NIH's Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence program, known as COBRE, which according to bradleyhospital.org will let the hospital continue and expand groundbreaking research through the center. The exact dollar figure attached to this latest award has been reported differently across outlets: Providence Business News put the award at $10.19 million over five years, while Brown University Health cited a more precise figure of $10,124,077 to create the COBRE center.
COBRE awards funding in three sequential five-year phases, and this is Bradley's second, per the same Providence Business News report. The hospital's first COBRE award came in 2021, when it received $10.12 million to establish the sleep studies center in the first place, that outlet noted.
What the New Funding Will Build
The Phase 2 award is earmarked for acquiring advanced scientific instrumentation and developing what bradleyhospital.org described as a state-of-the-art biospecimen laboratory. The funding is also meant to strengthen opportunities for junior faculty researchers, expand interdisciplinary collaboration and enhance research mentorship programs, the hospital said.
Jared M. Saletin, who directs the COBRE Center's Sleep and Circadian Methods Research Core and serves as associate director of Bradley Hospital's Sleep and Chronobiology Research Laboratory, is among the figures leading that work, per bradleyhospital.org. The hospital describes its center as the first and only NIH-funded research center in the United States dedicated specifically to understanding the relationships among sleep, circadian rhythms and pediatric mental health.
Research Aimed at Translating Science Into Care
Research conducted through the center aims to generate new insights into the biological and behavioral factors that influence mental health and to translate those discoveries into improved care, according to the hospital's announcement. In Providence Business News' interview with Saletin for its Five Questions With series, he said good sleep supports nearly every aspect of life and that sleep research may help improve the mental and behavioral health of children and families.
Saletin also told the outlet that the work ahead must identify the specific pathways through which sleep and circadian rhythms affect young people's mental health. He added that the first phase of funding supported junior investigators and research workforce development at local institutions, according to Providence Business News.
Proposed Studies Span ADHD, Bipolar Illness and Green Space
Several proposed projects tied to the center's work illustrate the breadth of the research agenda. One project will examine how green-space use affects sleep and mental health in primary school children from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, per Brown University Health. Another will use an intensive sleep and chronobiology approach combined with neuroimaging to study how sleepiness and memory in early adolescents with ADHD are affected by sleep bioregulatory factors, that organization reported.
A third proposed project takes a prospective approach to studying the roles of sleep patterns and circadian timing in the progression of bipolar illness in children and early adolescents, according to the same Brown University Health account. The stakes of that kind of research are underscored by federal public-health data: the CDC has reported that getting the recommended eight or more hours of sleep is linked with better emotional regulation, physical and mental health, attention, learning and behavior among adolescents.
For a hospital that has spent years building out this niche of research, the latest round of NIH support represents a bet that studying sleep and circadian biology in young people can keep paying dividends for how clinicians understand and treat pediatric mental health conditions.
