Lecture....

This past week my primary supervisor, Bart, gave his Inaugural Lecture. After promotion to Full Professor (at Victoria) academic staff give a public lecture as a kind of "debut" to share their research interests with the wider Victoria and Wellington communities.

He spoke about the "crisis" surrounding the development of pharmacological treatments for psychiatric disorders ranging from depression and anxiety to autism and drug addiction. For the staggering amount of money poured into drug development there are very few compounds that make it through all preclinical and clinical trials to be successful pharmaco-treatments for patients. This low success rate has prompted a move, from the pharmaceutical industry, away from investing in drug development for psychiatric disorders. And considering that an individual who suffers from depression may combat the disorder for a large portion of his/her lifetime the need for new effective treatments is very real.

After describing this crisis Bart went on to discuss ideas that may increase the success rate in drug development. First, he stressed that despite the fact that psychiatric disorders are classified as constellations of symptoms many of those symptoms overlap. For example there is a great deal of comorbidity (more than one disorder happening in an individual simultaneously) between anxiety and mood disorders; in addition, many individuals who fit the diagnosis for schizophrenia also struggle with drug addiction. With this said there may be a place for developing drugs that serve as target treatments for symptoms of a disorder. His second point is that any compound that is approved for human trials must pass rigorous preclinical testing in animals. Therefore, we need better preclinical models to help researchers predict how a drug will perform within the human system. Lastly, he pointed out that in order to make any headway with respect to successful drug development the pharmaceutical industry must "come back to the table" and participate in this venture. Otherwise, we will continue to see a deficit in viable treatments for individuals with psychiatric disorders.

This lecture reminded me how proud I am to be a part of this lab. And I am truly fortunate in having such a great supervisor. After I completed my Master's degree and was contemplating PhD work I remember thinking that it would be unlikely that I would find another great supervisor. I'm pleased to say that I was dead wrong about that. :)