This is an application to renew a five-year Institutional Postdoctoral Training Program in Molecular Approaches to Mental Illness under the auspices of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry, a unit of UCSF?s Department of Psychiatry. Its main goal is to train investigators to use cellular and molecular techniques to solve psychiatric problems. Recent advances in genetics, molecular biology and neuroscience have stimulated research into the biological basis of psychiatric disorders. Because psychiatry has not traditionally emphasized molecular sciences, and few basic scientists have been interested in addressing complex psychiatric problems, there is a scarcity of investigators both willing and able to apply these approaches to the understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders. The program proposed in this application will train three types of Fellows: psychiatrists with MD/PhD degrees; psychiatrists with MD degrees; and non-psychiatrists with an interest in psychiatric research (with PhD or MD/PhD degrees). All Fellows will be provided with a program consisting of a three-year full-time laboratory experience supervised by an active scientist, a core seminar series, and appropriate formal course work. Most fellows will be funded by this grant for only one year of training experience, with the other two years provided by other sources, mainly individual fellowships. The program will be directed by an Executive Committee composed of the Core Faculty (Drs. Barondes, von Zastrow, Doupe, Rubenstein, Tecott). There are also 16 affiliated research mentors who have taken or will take trainees. All core faculty have an MD or combined MD/PhD degree and are all fully trained in clinical psychiatry. The training program should provide fellows with the requisite skills to contribute, as independent investigators, to the solution of clinical problems in psychiatry, using cellular and molecular approaches.
