For decades, psychiatry has struggled with a critical gap: unlike cardiology or oncology, there are no molecular biomarkers to guide diagnosis or treatment. Polaris Genomics was founded to change that, and our mission recently earned global recognition as we progress toward building a precision medicine framework for neuropsychiatry. We’re proud to join the ranks of visionaries pushing the boundaries of what is possible in healthcare innovation as award recipients of the Johnson & Johnson QuickFire Challenge. Highlighting our potential to transform how mental health is understood and treated, the award includes non-dilutive funding as well as access to Johnson & Johnson’s global incubator network, JLABS, including personalized mentorship from experts across Johnson & Johnson.
Building Partnerships to Drive Change
Recognition is only meaningful if it leads to impact. Alongside the QuickFire award, Polaris recently finalized a new research agreement with a neuroscience company applying our ADAPT Neuropsychiatric Biomarker Discovery Platform™ to one of the field’s toughest challenges: treatment-resistant depression. By helping to identify biological subtypes of patients, we aim to accelerate drug development and improve treatment response rates.
This work is part of a broader shift: Polaris is increasingly partnering with pharmaceutical and biotech companies that recognize that biomarkers are the missing link in psychiatric drug development.
Scientific Progress Anchored in PTSD Research
Polaris continues to advance biomarker discovery in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that affects millions yet remains difficult to diagnose with precision. The Polaris team is working toward making these technological methods translatable across neuropsychiatric research.
- PTSD screening tool validation: We’ve surpassed 25% of our goal toward sample collection for validation of our multi-marker PTS-ID™ panel. This study is supported by U.S. Air Force funding.
- Emerging technological advantages: Our targeted RNAseq panel, ADAPT™ demonstrates distinct advantages in detecting low-abundance genes critical in neuropsychiatry yet commonly missed by standard techniques. It goes beyond RNA to identify DNA mutations and how they affect the function of proteins, and can deliver results from multiple tissue types including saliva and buffy coats.
- New biomarker discovery: A key breakthrough emerged in the discovery of a new highly significant biomarker for PTSD resilience — the basis for a new patent application and upcoming publication.
- Co-morbid research: Ongoing collaborations with two universities include investigating the genomic overlap between PTSD and alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Together, these advances move us closer to giving mental health clinicians and neuropsychiatric researchers access to the kind of molecular tools that define modern practice in fields like oncology and cardiology — tools that mental health has lacked for far too long.
Expanding Our Global Footprint
This year, Polaris converted provisional patents into international filings spanning North America, the EU, and regions across Asia and the Middle East. These filings extend the reach of our PTSD biomarker discoveries and set the stage for global collaboration.
Contributing to the Field
Polaris scientists are preparing manuscripts for peer-reviewed publication, including a methods paper and a study on PTSD biomarker discoveries. Our work has recently also been presented at leading conferences, including the Society of Biological Psychiatry Annual Meeting and a PTSD Research Conference in Boston.
Looking Ahead
Polaris Genomics was founded on a simple but urgent belief: mental health deserves the same scientific rigor as every other area of medicine. We continue to build momentum in mental health biomarker discovery. By combining genomic science with partnerships across academia and industry, we are working toward a future where precision approaches improve how psychiatric conditions are diagnosed, studied, and treated. With the support of partners like Johnson & Johnson Innovation and the dedication of our current and prospective investors, collaborators, and team, we are making that future a reality.