November 2009 Newsletter
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Newsletter “To advance education and research in the science of psychopharmacology for the public benefit” November 2009 Message from the President... BAP is, we hope, an evolving Association reflecting the needs and concerns of its members. However, to do that we need a Council that evolves too, so this is your annual encouragement to stand, or nominate colleagues, for positions on Council, a call for which we see on page 6 of this Newsletter. You will also see some changes to the involvement of Council in the nominations process, introduced following some concerns of Council members that this process was not completely transparent. We expect, however, that enthusiasm for Council membership will make any nominations committee redundant! Fortunately only a small component of Council business is taken up with introspective procedural concerns. Some of the developments that Council have instituted can be seen on the web-site, as well as some being reported here. Increasingly we have introduced initiatives to develop and encourage training of the non-clinical membership of BAP. In addition to the Preclinical Certificate (see page 8) these include an in vivo training initiative for undergraduate vacation students which provides a supplement to cover some additional costs associated with in vivo experiments (page 9); piloting the scheme this year seems to have been very successful. Such initiatives complement the various excellent and well-established education programmes for clinical members. These too are developing: Hamish McAllister Williams is leading our efforts in putting together an on-line clinical psychopharmacology resource which we intend to have CPD-accredited. On the website you will see that our initial foray into the world of PR and the media generated some press releases from the Summer Meeting which had some, so far limited, media interest. We are actively exploring having a public lecture at one of the science festivals next year and this will be advertised on the website as and when it is arranged. BAP is composed of enthusiasts for psychopharmacology and we want to share this enthusiasm – we need to make the most of these opportunities to raise the profile and public understanding of our discipline. If you have any comments, concerns or suggestions relating to any or all of these matters, please do not hesitate to contact me, any Council member or Susan Chandler in the BAP Office. Gavin Reynolds British Association for Psychopharmacology 36 Cambridge Place • Hills Road • Cambridge • CB2 1NS Tel: 01223 358 395 • Fax: 01223 321 268 • www.bap.org.uk Executive Officer Mrs Susan Chandler • [email protected] Assistant to the Executive Officer Mrs Lynne Harmer • [email protected] Education Development and Delivery Co-ordinator Dr Katie Hewitt • [email protected] Congratulations from the President and Council to all the recipients of BAP Prizes and bursaries during 2009 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award Wyeth Psychopharmacology Award Winners: Professor Malcolm Lader Carmine Pariante (London) Sam Chamberlain (Cambridge) Luke Clark (Cambridge) Poster Prize Winners in association President’s Poster Prize Winners in with the Summer Meeting in Oxford: association with the Summer Meeting in Oxford: Danilo Arnone (Manchester) Christoph Anacker (London) For the poster: Current major depression For the poster: Antidepressants protect human but not remitted major depression shows neural stem cells from glucocorticoid-induced increased neural responses to sad facial reduction in proliferation expressions Victoria Gradin (Aberdeen) Pradeep Nathan (Cambridge) For the poster: Investigation of reward For the poster: High dose glycine impairs the prediction error signals in depression and prepulse inhibition measure of sensorimotor schizophrenia gating in humans Jesper Andreasen (Denmark) For the poster: Subtype-selective nicotinic receptor agonists enhance the activity of the antidepressants citalopram and reboxetine in the mouse forced swim test (MFST) Nicola Foister (St Andrews) For the poster: Optimisation of attentional set shifting task in mice 2 Nov 09 2009 Undergraduate Award Winners in Robert Kerwin International Conference association with the Summer Meeting Bursaries 2009 in Oxford: Emma Searle (Southampton) Susannah Murphy (Oxford) Sarah McVeigh (Southampton) Darragh Downey (Manchester) Christopher Wood (Newcastle) An online gallery of photographs from the summer meeting may be found on the website, together with the abstract book in pdf format Statistics Clinic at the 2009 Summer Meeting The BAP Stats Clinic is now in its 6th year and it was good to see there is still a lot of interest and questions from delegates on the subject of statistics and experimental design. This year the clinic ran for two and a half days, and I was busy for most of that time. From clinicians to in-vivo scientists, professors to undergraduates, it was an interesting mix of complex experimental design questions and interesting analysis problems to keep me on my toes. I was surprised that no one brought any data along this time, although a few expressed the wish that they should have done so. The consultations I can give are invariably more enlightening if we have the actual data to look at! Walking around the posters in a quiet moment I am always pleased to see the amount of hard work that goes into the statistical analysis, and it was good to see some of the ideas I’ve been talking about over the last few years are now being used. There were still a few t-tests in evidence (tut tut), but it was good to see presenters employing more complex analyses to make the most of their data. In 2010 I will be presenting at the BAP Pre-clinical statistics module which has always been a good opportunity to discuss experimental design and statistics in a bit more detail. I look forward to seeing some of you there in February and if not then next Summer in Harrogate. And if you can’t wait that long there is always HLS Statistical Services! Simon Bate [email protected] Nov 09 3 PHILIP B. BRADLEY AN APPRECIATION In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the medical school of Birmingham University was one of the main centres of brain research not only in the UK but also in Europe. Joel Elkes was the founder of the Dept of Experimental Psychiatry in 1951 and, one year later, appointed a young zoologist from Bristol University, Philip Bradley, to the staff. Philip had been using a new microelectrode technique to study the nervous system of insects and Joel Elkes thought that this technique could be applied to vertebrates. This led Philip to establish a novel technique for recording the activity of single neurons in the conscious cat brain, research that laid the basis for understanding the actions of cholinergic compounds, stimulants and hallucinogens such as LSD on behaviour. After Joel Elkes moved to the USA to become the director of the Clinical Psychopharmacology Research Centre of the NIMH in 1957, Philip took over the leadership of the Department, which become the Dept of Neuropharmacology. Together with Brian Key, he continued his pioneering studies on the electrophysiological properties of single neurons and how their activities could be modulated by psychotropic drugs. The neurochemist, Brian Ansell, was, by this time, also a member of the department. So much for the early years of neuropharmacology in Birmingham. I graduated from the Dept of Medical Biochemistry and Pharmacology there in 1959 and during the final year of the undergraduate course had attended some lecture courses provided by Philip Bradley and Brian Ansell. At that time, neuroscience was in its infancy and these courses for the first time seemed to integrate neurophysiology and neuropharmacology with neurochemistry and how such integration may help to understand the mechanisms whereby psychotropic drugs could benefit mental illness. There were rumours in the medical school regarding some of the interesting clinical experiments 4 Nov 09 that had taken place in the Dept of Experimental Psychiatry earlier in the 1950’s involving LSD. The research staff were the guinea pigs! To us youngsters, the Dept of Experimental Psychiatry was clearly a fun place! As a person, Philip appeared to those who first met him as being a quiet, somewhat reserved person. However, it soon became apparent that appearances were deceptive. He had a droll sense of humour and was always considerate and helpful to colleagues and students. He was a person with scientific integrity and always emphasised the importance of honesty in scientific research. In this day and age, such criteria seem too often to be ignored! I had the good fortune to keep in fairly regular contact with Philip during my subsequent career. He spent several years as the Extern in pharmacology in Galway, occasions during which good food and wine helped to stimulate both scientific and political discussions often late into the night. On his visits, he always presented me with the “Daily Telegraph” –to give me the other point of view, he would say! As a result of the seminal research being undertaken by Philip and colleagues, the Birmingham Department achieved an international reputation. Not surprisingly, Philip was one of the 32 founder members of the CINP in 1957. He served as a First Councillor from 1958 to 1962 and as Treasurer from 1966 to 1972. In 1964 he became the chairman of the LOC of the 4th CINP Congress in Birmingham. This was my first exposure to an international congress and I still remember the excitement that many of us young psychopharmacologists experienced hearing for the first time the latest research from the pioneers of psychopharmacology. From the UK perspective, the most important event that occurred in 1974 was the establishment, in London, of the BAP. Philip had invited me to attend the event to help make up the numbers of the basic science group.