The GENDEP Consortium brings together medical research centres, most of which already have a long established record of working together within European multi-site collaborations, with well established groups in the fields of genetics, pharmacogenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. These medical and basic science groups have formed the beginnings of a close working relationship with a network of experts on ethical legal and social (including economic) implications that is coordinated from a major new centre, BIOS (the centre for the study of bioscience, biomedicine, biotechnology and society), based at the London School of Economics (LSE). The integral involvement of stakeholders within the Consortium is a prominent feature and GENDEP includes a pioneering group called the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE), a collaborative research venture between mental health service users and medical academics. Indeed the main investigators at the medical sites are all practising physicians. From industry there are key contributions from an SME (micro, small and medium-sized enterprise), Proteome Science, one of Europe's most rapidly expanding SMEs in proteomics as well as from a major pharmaceutical company Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), which has a successful record of scientific collaborations with several of the GENDEP Centres.