Advances Seen in Mood Disorders Research

Abstract

clinical research rather than basic and “translational” research. Translational research falls between basic and commercially relevant research—for example, testing in human tissue whether a particular molecular pathway is relevant to a disease. “It’s the critical step that’s the most vulnerable,” said Moses. Woolley and Propst reported that individuals in the United States rate research as a high national priority, and they support greater investment by public and private funders (Woolley M and Propst SM. JAMA. 2005;294:13801384). Given this support, said Woolley, the proportion of the entire health budget devoted to health research should be more than the current 5.5%. “It doesn’t make sense to people that you would put less than 6 cents of the dollar toward your future, in this case the future of health,” she said. Despite such concerns, Moses noted that the funding situation is not dire. While NIH support may not be keeping up with inflation, “there’s still more than $110 billion going to biomedical research. It’s a tremendous amount of money, so to say that the barn is burning is probably not accurate.” The more important issue may be how the money is spent, added Moses. “The challenge for science in biomedicine today is productivity—to get more out for what goes in.” To achieve that, academic and NIH science should be brought together with industry science, he said. The good news is that new kinds of interactions and collaborations are occurring as companies and universities show greater flexibility, said Moses.