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 Press Release 
For immediate release to Established and Early-Career Investigators Their cutting-edge work is transforming knowledge about the brain and its disorders, opening the way to better treatments for millions who suffer from serious mental illness NARSAD: The Mental Health Research Association is the world’s largest donor-supported charity dedicated to funding innovative scientific research on psychiatric disorders of the entire life cycle, from childhood onward. Since it began in 1987 as the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, NARSAD has awarded $215 million in grants to 2,477 scientists at over 400 universities, medical centers and research institutes in the United States and 25 other countries. With its annual Independent Investigator awards still to be announced this summer, 2007 will be a record year of grantmaking for the organization. Recipients of the 2007 Distinguished Investigator and Young Investigator grants come from a full range of scholarly approaches in psychiatry, neurology, psychology and many other areas of medical and biological research. Their research will cover important themes of contemporary medical research in the major disease areas of depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and addiction, autism, ADD/ADHD and many other adult and childhood disorders. The investigators will make use of the most powerful research tools available, including genetics and advanced imaging technologies. NARSAD’s grant recipients are selected on the basis of the excellence and originality of their work and without regard to their institution of origin or discipline by members of the organization’s Scientific Council, a volunteer group of 94 distinguished leaders in the field of neuropsychiatric research. Distinguished Investigator Awards: “A leap of ideas with enormous potential” The 23 Distinguished Investigator grants awarded this year (a complete list can be found at the end of this document) will support urgent research by experienced and highly accomplished scientists from leading institutions. The program offers one-year grants of $100,000, and fills an increasingly important niche in mental-health grant-giving. NARSAD Distinguished Investigators work at the cutting edge of their fields, and find in NARSAD an organization willing to support projects of great potential reward and above-average risk. Jack Barchas, M.D., chairman of the department of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and chair of the committee that selects NARSAD’s Distinguished Investigators, said: “These awards represent one of the few mechanisms for encouraging new and creative approaches at their earliest stage.” According to Dr. Barchas, the research supported by these grants often represents “a leap of ideas” and tends to “have enormous potential for yielding profound results that can lead to new approaches to treatment for serious mental illnesses.” This year’s Distinguished Investigators will use their NARSAD grants for studies of genetic association and expression in schizophrenia, depression and autism; an experimental drug for schizophrenia; major depression in women; the relation of low birthweight in girls to subsequent depression; the role of in utero stress in the development of serious mental illnesses; children at risk for anxiety disorders; treatment-resistant depression; brain structures and neurotransmitter systems implicated in depression; anxiety disorders and schizophrenia; and the relationship of creativity and mental illness. Young Investigator Awards: “Potential to help millions who suffer from serious mental illness” NARSAD’s Young Investigator Awards provide $30,000 a year for one- or two-year projects and are designed to help early-career scientists initiate independent research on brain and behavior disorders. This year’s 222 Young Investigators are based at more than 100 institutions in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Israel and Australia. In reviewing the range of grant-winning proposals, Dr. Herbert Meltzer, the Bixler/May/Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and a professor of pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, who chairs of the Young Investigator selection committee of NARSAD’s Scientific Council, points to “an explosion in interest in genetics and brain imaging.” This development reflects the growing number of genes identified as involved in brain disorders and the advances made in brain-imaging technologies such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional MRI that make it possible to visualize detailed activity in the living brain in real-time. Some of the grant projects will address problems of particular populations, among them, adolescent, postpartum and late-life depressions; the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia, which affect young women disproportionately; and genetically isolated populations. Dr. Meltzer notes an increasing interest in childhood and adolescent studies, a trend he lauds since many neuropsychiatric disorders are believed to arise during brain development. Other studies are aimed at ameliorating problems of concomitant health complications, such as the heightened risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in schizophrenia. In the critical area of clinical research, NARSAD’s Young Investigators are working to improve diagnostic methods, risk prediction, and assessment of brain-function changes in the early stages of disease in the hope of forestalling and, ultimately, preventing disease development. Of major importance are studies to learn how antipsychotic and antidepressant treatments work, both to eliminate unwanted side effects, such as weight gain and insulin resistance, and to develop new and better treatments – including treatments for conditions like autism, for which none exist -- through pharmacology, new techniques of brain stimulation, psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions. In Dr. Meltzer’s view, what is exciting about this work and the best contemporary research on mental health, and seen in the work of many NARSAD grantees, is that it traces “the trajectory from preclinical studies to translational research -- which is to say, it undertakes to translate basic scientific findings into actual medical advances with the potential to help millions who suffer from serious mental illness.” A list of NARSAD’s 2007 Young Investigators and summaries of their research projects can be found here. NARSAD’s 2007 Distinguished Investigators David J. Anderson, Ph.D., Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at Caltech and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the California Institute of Technology, will use his grant to advance his study of a portion of the brain called the amygdala, which is thought to be involved in several disorders including depression, severe anxiety, and several phobias. Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Andrew H. Woods Chair of Psychiatry and Director of the Mental Health Clinical Research Center at the University of Iowa, will use her grant to further her neural-level study of the relationship between creativity and mental illness. David Braff, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and the director of the Schizophrenia Program of the University of California, San Diego, will advance a project he has launched to understand the complex genetic makeup of different measurable characteristics of schizophrenia, as well as explore the genetic basis of functional impairments associated with the illness. Cameron S. Carter, M.D., of who is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Davis, and director of the UC Davis Imaging Research Center will advance his project on electrophysiological activity in the brain that is associated with cognitive dysfunction in people with schizophrenia. Dennis S. Charney, M.D., who is dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs and a professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and pharmacology and systems therapeutics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will study a new method of delivering therapy to people with treatment-resistant depression. Elizabeth Jane Costello, Ph.D., professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of the Duke University Medical Center, will further her investigation of the relation of low birthweight in girls to subsequent depression. Jonathan Flint, M.D., MRCPsych, who is the Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford in England, will advance his large case-control study of major depression in Chinese women. Nathan A. Fox, Ph.D., director of the Child Development Lab in the Department of Human Development at the University of Maryland, will advance his project to study children at risk for anxiety disorders. Ann M. Graybiel, Ph.D., Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, will advance her study of a part of the brain that is implicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction. Ruben C. Gur, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, will advance his study of behavioral characteristics related to schizophrenia. James F. Gusella, Ph.D., who is director of the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Bullard Professor of Neurogenetics at Harvard Medical School, will advance his study of several gene variants associated with autism. Matti Isohanni, M.D., M.Sc.P.H., chairman and professor of psychiatry at the University of Oulu in Finland, will advance his project on brain markers of midlife schizophrenia. Louis M. Kunkel, Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics and genetics and director of the Program in Genomics at Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School, will advance his project on the signatures of gene expression in children with autism. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Lawrence E. Kolb Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physician and Surgeons, will determine if an experimental medicine called AL-108, when administered in addition to antipsychotic drugs, enhances cognition in patients with schizophrenia. Dolores Malaspina, M.D., M.Sc.P.H., chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, will advance her study of whether in utero stress is related to later serious forms of mental illness. Robert C. Malenka, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, will advance his study of alterations in the dopamine system in a brain region implicated in depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Russell L. Margolis, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and neurology at Johns Hopkins University and director of the university’s Laboratory of Genetic Neurobiology and its Neurogenic Testing Laboratory, will advance his project on genomic copy number variation in schizophrenia. Herbert Y. Meltzer, M.D., who is Division Director of Psychopharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, will advance his work in identifying candidate genes associated with schizophrenia. Lorna Role, Ph.D., a professor of anatomy and cell biology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, will further her project on the relationship of a gene called Nrg1 to schizophrenia. Michal Schwartz, Ph.D., the Maurice and Ilse Katz Professorial Chair in Neuroimmunology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, will advance her project on a novel T cell-based vaccination for defeating depression. Nelson Spruston, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Physiology of Northwestern University, will further his project to identify how specific nerve cells are altered in a part of a part of the brain implicated in schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. J. David Sweatt, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will advance his project on how changes in gene expression are related to changes in behaviors observed in schizophrenia and depression. David Valle, M.D., a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and director of the university’s Institute of Genetic Medicine and its Center for Inherited Disease Research, will advance his project on the identification and characterization of schizophrenia susceptibility genes. More detailed descriptions of these research studies can be found here. |
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