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Psychiatric research
gets funding boost at MIT
and Harvard
(January
2008 Issue)
By Nan Shnitzler
The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) announced last fall that it received $20 million
to establish the James W. and Patricia T. Poitras Center for Affective
Disorders Research which will support research into the biological
basis of serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder and major depression.
"Psychiatric research has lagged," says Charles Jennings, Ph.D.,
director of the McGovern's neurotechnology program. "We know less
about the biological basis of psychiatric disease than cancer or
cardiovascular disease."
In part, the lag is because of the exponential complexity of the
task, in which genetics, brain physiology and environmental factors
converge to manifest disease. But there is cause for optimism. Genetics
technology and brain imaging have advanced dramatically in the last
five years, Jennings says.
Another plus, he says, is that philanthropic funds free researchers
to respond more quickly to opportunities and to try high risk, high
payoff ideas that would be frowned upon by stricter funding sources
such as the government.
"The ultimate goal is to understand how genetics and environmental
risk factors interact in the brain to cause psychiatric disease,"
Jennings says. "We have the best chance than ever before to understand
that," he says.
Other local institutions will coordinate research, particularly
the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, which in March 2007 established
the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, with a $100 million
commitment from the Stanley Foundation, to focus on identifying
the genes involved in brain-based disorders.
"By combining MIT's strengths in neuroscience with the Broad Institute's
expertise in genetics, we can now launch a multi-pronged attack
on the underlying causes of mental illness. Only through a large
multidisciplinary effort can we hope to understand the causes of
these very complex diseases," says Robert Desimone, Ph.D., director
of the McGovern Institute.
But one can't do clinical studies without patients and preferably
the participation of their families. That's where Massachusetts
General Hospital and McLean Hospital come in. In fact, the Poitrases,
who have a daughter with bipolar disorder, also funded research
at McLean, says Bruce M. Cohen, M.D., Ph. D., former hospital president
who now runs a research institute there. "What's unique about McLean,
we have lots of patients that like to participate in studies. You
can't do the genetics or brain imaging without that," Cohen says.
At McLean, clinicians identify the physical and behavioral characteristics
of thousands of patients in great detail, Cohen says, which could
help the genotyping performed at the Broad Institute reveal correlations.
"Sorting through three billion base pairs and trying to find associations
with behaviors and illness, that's a huge amount of work," Cohen
says. "The Stanley money will in large part make that highly technical
sophisticated molecular research happen."
Researchers are in the process of prioritizing projects, Jennings
says, but using functional imaging to look at brain action in psychiatric
patient populations will be key. For example, imaging could reveal
which brain regions are activated when patients carrying a potential
risk gene respond in real time to external stimuli. The results
could be compared to those who don't carry the gene.
"One can envisage a future in which we know the major risk genes,
then people with a family history could be screened as children
to do something prophylactically to reduce the risk of developing
the disease later in life," Jennings says.
Another area ripe for results will be drug development because
the theoretical basis for choosing the appropriate molecular target
has been elusive, Jennings says.
Jennings laments that psychiatry and psychology today are too much
based on trial and error and anticipates in the not too distant
future a more theoretical approach to "understanding how patients
differ, how drugs work and how treatment will be customized to individual
patients."
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