April 29, 2008
Bryan Roth, MD, PhD, a professor at the UNC School of Pharmacy, has received a Distinguished Investigators Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the largest donor-supported organization in the world that supports research on brain and behavior disorders.
NARSAD awarded eleven Distinguished Investigators grants this year from a pool of 160 applicants. The one-year, $100,000 grants will support research with the greatest potential to lead the field forward in its understanding and treatment of serious mental illness.
Roth is using new methodology recently invented in his lab to create mice with specially engineered characteristics, with which he hopes to shed new light on the neuronal pathways of schizophrenia. His work will help provide information for developing screening campaigns to identify new drugs for schizophrenia and related disorders.
Roth is in the School’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pharmacology at the School of Medicine. He is also the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program, which provides screening of novel psychoactive compounds for pharmacological and functional activity at cloned human or rodent CNS receptors, channels, and transporters.