NIMH awards grant to advance virtual reality assessment tool for schizophrenia

The NIMH recently awarded a phase 2b grant from the Small Business Innovation Research program to NeuroCog Trials Inc. for their Virtual Reality Functional Capacity Assessment Tool for schizophrenia.

The Virtual Reality Functional Capacity Assessment Tool (VRFCAT) is a computerized measure for functional capacity in schizophrenia. The tool presents users with a realistic, immersive environment that recreates routine daily activities and offers different scenarios to eliminate practice effects.

The grant will allow researchers to recruit a large sample of cognitively healthy individuals matched for demographics to the U.S. population.

It will also fund the development, localization and validation of U.S. Spanish, Italian, German, Russian and Polish language versions of the assessment to be used in international clinical trials.

“We are excited by the continued NIMH support of the VRFCAT for use in clinical trials that have the potential to benefit the lives of those suffering from schizophrenia, affective disorders and other devastating psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative illnesses, including early Alzheimer's disease,” Richard Keefe, PhD, founder and CEO of NeuroCog Trials, said in a press release. “The FDA has stated that in order to receive approval for new drugs in these areas, patients must show meaningful gains in functional capacity, or the degree to which they have changed their potential to alter real-world behavior. We believe the VRFCAT is the next generation assessment capable of measuring this change.”