Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience

描述（由申请人提供）：抑郁症是全球疾病负担的第三大元凶；酒精和非法药物的使用是造成这种负担的十大原因之一（世界卫生组织《全球疾病负担：2004年最新情况》）。在COBRE资助的十年中，密西西比大学医学中心（UMMC）的精神神经科学中心（CPN）开发了尖端的核心设施，并将其重点扩展到抑郁症和酒精依赖领域。创新和多学科的中心研究人员在神经元和神经胶质、脑血管系统、衰老、性别、转录因子、血清素和谷氨酸在抑郁症和酗酒中的作用方面进行了开创性的观察，许多人已经获得了独立的资助。我们在第三阶段的任务是通过促进指导，加强研究核心，从而增加NIH在密西西比州的资金，继续建立精神疾病和精神活性物质使用障碍病理生理学的基础研究。实现这一使命的具体目标是：1)为维持和扩展最先进的研究核心提供支持，这些核心对支持整个机构和州的基础研究至关重要；2)促进协作和多学科指导环境，支持创新的试点研究；3)在研究者发起的研究资助和合作计划项目的支持下，建立一个自我维持的卓越生物医学研究中心。我们的协同研究核心在整个机构和全州范围内可供COBRE和INBRE的其他研究人员使用，将允许指导项目沿着使用成像核心和分子与基因组核心的轨迹发展，以量化死后脑核心组织中的疾病特异性病理，并在动物行为核心中对这种病理进行建模，以开发精神病理学的表型模型，并探索抑郁症和精神活性物质使用障碍（包括酒精依赖）的新治疗方法。最先进的研究核心将支持有指导的基础研究，以寻求预防和治疗这些全球精神卫生挑战的新战略。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Depression is the 3rd leading contributor to the global burden of disease; alcohol and illicit drug use are among the top ten contributors to that burden (World Health Organization The Global Burden of Disease: 2004 Update). In ten years of COBRE funding, the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience (CPN) at The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) developed cutting-edge core facilities and expanded its focus to the areas of depression and alcohol dependence. Innovative and muitidisciplinary Center investigators have collaborated in ground breaking observations on the roles of neurons and glia, cerebral vasculature, aging, gender, transcription factors, serotonin and glutamate in depression and alcoholism and many have secured independent funding. Our mission in Phase III is to continue building basic research in the pathophysiology of mental illnesses and psychoactive substance use disorders by promoting mentoring, strengthening research cores and, thereby, to increase NIH funding in Mississippi. Specific Aims toward reaching this mission are to: 1) provide support to maintain and expand state-of-the-art research cores that are essential to support basic research across the institution and the state, 2) promote a collaborative and muitidisciplinary mentoring environment that supports innovative pilot research, and 3) develop a self-sustaining center of biomedical research excellence supported by investigator-initiated research grants and collaborative program projects. Our synergistic research cores, available across the institution and state-wide to other COBRE and INBRE investigators, will permit the development of mentored projects along a trajectory of using the Imaging Core and the Molecular and Genomics Core to quantify disease-specific pathology in tissues from the Postmortem Brain Core and modeling such pathology in the Animal Behavior Core to develop phenotypic models of psychopathology and explore novel treatments for depression and psychoactive substance use disorders, including alcohol dependence. State-of-the-art research cores will support mentored basic research in search of new strategies of prevention and treatment for these global challenges to mental health.