Carlos A. Zarate, M.D., a NARSAD Independent Investigator Grantee (2005), has pioneered revolutionary studies that have led to novel treatments for mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder that begin working much faster than previous options. Dr. Zarate is Chief of Experimental Therapeutics of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. With a strong focus on the pathophysiology of severe mental illnesses, his goal is to develop better treatments particularly for patients living with depression, bipolar disorder and/or other mood disorders. His research into a drug called Ketamine has resulted in rapid-acting depression treatments that work within hours and last 3-5 days or more. Because of the speed at which this drug reacts within the body and the duration of its effects, it is possible that emergency room doctors may have a possible treatment for those suffering from depression and acute suicidality.

“For me it’s an exciting time to be a researcher. We didn’t have much of these technologies even a decade ago and now we have all these options and possibilities. And that will definitely, and it has, led to an increased understanding of what are the causes of the illness, maybe what are potentially promising targets to develop better treatments. These things we didn’t have in recent past.”

Dr. Zarate was recognized for this discovery and his career of work at the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation National Awards Dinner in New York City in October 2011 with the Bipolar Mood Disorder Outstanding Achievement Prize (renamed the Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research in 2012).

Dr. Miller is an internationally recognized leader in the area of brain-immune interactions as they relate to depression in medically healthy as well as medically ill patients including patients with cancer.  His work has demonstrated that during immune activation, inflammatory cytokines can access the brain and interact with the metabolism of dopamine and glutamate, while altering neurocircuits in the brain relevant to motivation and reward as well as anxiety and alarm.  Dr. Miller has also studied the impact of cytokines on neuroendocrine regulation and sleep including the study of the specific signal transduction pathways involved. Additionally, Dr. Miller and his group conducted the first clinical trial examining the efficacy of a cytokine antagonist for the treatment of depression, providing a template for current clinical trials using immunotherapeutic strategies to treat mood disorders. Learn more.

Mary-Claire King was the first to prove that breast cancer is inherited in some families as the result of mutations in the gene that she named BRCA1. In addition to inherited breast and ovarian cancer, her research interests include the genetic basis of schizophrenia and human genetic diversity and evolution. She also pioneered the use of DNA sequencing for human rights investigations, developing the approach of sequencing mitochondrial DNA preserved in human remains, then applying this method to the identification of kidnapped children in Argentina and subsequently to cases of human rights violations on six continents.

Dr. King received her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California at Berkeley, where her dissertation in 1973 demonstrated that humans and chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical. Dr. King has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health and the National Commission on Breast Cancer of the President’s Cancer Panel.

Carlos A. Zarate, M.D., a NARSAD Independent Investigator Grantee (2005), has pioneered revolutionary studies that have led to novel treatments for mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder that begin working much faster than previous options. Dr. Zarate is Chief of Experimental Therapeutics of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. With a strong focus on the pathophysiology of severe mental illnesses, his goal is to develop better treatments particularly for patients living with depression, bipolar disorder and/or other mood disorders. His research into a drug called Ketamine has resulted in rapid-acting depression treatments that work within hours and last 3-5 days or more. Because of the speed at which this drug reacts within the body and the duration of its effects, it is possible that emergency room doctors may have a possible treatment for those suffering from depression and acute suicidality.

“For me it’s an exciting time to be a researcher. We didn’t have much of these technologies even a decade ago and now we have all these options and possibilities. And that will definitely, and it has, led to an increased understanding of what are the causes of the illness, maybe what are potentially promising targets to develop better treatments. These things we didn’t have in recent past.”

Dr. Zarate was recognized for this discovery and his career of work at the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation National Awards Dinner in New York City in October 2011 with the Bipolar Mood Disorder Outstanding Achievement Prize (renamed the Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research in 2012).

Dr. Deisseroth coined the term “optogenetics” to name the breakthrough technology he developed that uses light to control millisecond-precision activity patterns in genetically-defined cell types within the brains of freely moving animals. His laboratory and thousands of others around the globe are now applying this technology to probe the dynamics of neural circuits in both healthy and diseased brains.

Dr. Deisseroth received his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Harvard in 1992, his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1998, and his M.D. from Stanford in 2000. He completed postdoctoral training, medical internship and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he was board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 2006. While continuing as a practicing psychiatrist specializing in mood disorders and autism-spectrum disease, Dr. Deisseroth teaches and serves as the chair of undergraduate education in bioengineering at the Stanford University School of Engineering.

Watch Dr. Deisseroth's prizewinner video.

Dr. Weinberger’s research has focused on brain mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia. He was instrumental in focusing research on the role of abnormal brain development as a risk factor for schizophrenia. His lab identified the first genetic effects that account for variation in specific human cognitive functions and in human temperament and identified brain mechanisms related to a number of genes that have been implicated in causing psychosis, including COMT, GRM3, KCNH2, DISC1, NRG1 and ERBB4. He and his colleagues developed the first high fidelity animal model of schizophrenia. In 2003, Science magazine highlighted the genetic research of his lab as the second biggest scientific breakthrough of the year, second to the origins of the cosmos.

Dr. Weinberger was formerly Director of the Genes, Cognition, and Psychosis Program of the Intramural Research Program at the NIMH.

Dr. Kendler’s research focuses on studies of psychiatric genetics in brain and behavior disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression, alcoholism, personality disorders and nicotine dependence. He utilizes methods ranging from family studies to large-sample population-based twin studies to molecular genetic studies aimed at identifying specific genes that influence the vulnerability to developing these illnesses. Data collection for these studies has been completed in Virginia, Ireland, China, Norway and Sweden.

Dr. Kendler has been involved in DSM-III-R, DSM-IV and most recently, DSM-5 where he chaired the Scientific Review Committee. Since 1996, he has served as Director of the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. Before joining Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Kendler worked at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Dr. Nestler studies the molecular basis of addiction and depression in animal models, focusing on the brain pathways that regulate responses to natural rewards such as food, sex and social interaction. His research has established that drug- and stress-induced changes in genetic transcription factors and chromatin remodeling mechanisms in reward pathways mediate long-lived behavioral changes relevant to addiction and depression.

Before moving to Mount Sinai, Dr. Nestler was Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and the Director of the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities and the Division of Molecular Psychiatry at Yale.

Dr. Meltzer directs a multifaceted research program in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder which is devoted to developing more effective treatments. He is one of a few clinical researchers also heavily engaged in basic research. He is particularly renowned for having been the principal investigator of the seminal trials that led to the approval of clozapine for treatment-resistant schizophrenia (1988) and patients who are at high risk for suicide (2003). He also is credited with articulating the theory that atypical antipsychotics such as clozapine owe much of their advantage over typical drugs to the balance between serotonin and dopamine receptor blockade (1989). Dr. Meltzer is an active clinician who directs the clinical trial research effort at mental health centers in Chicago and Cleveland.

Prior to joining Northwestern, Dr. Meltzer taught at Vanderbilt University, where he also directed the psychosis program.