In June, International Mental Health Research Organization (IMHRO) announced a collaboration with the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Office of Science and Technology (COSAT). Under the terms of this collaboration, COSAT will provide a $250,000 grant towards the funding of IMHRO's Rising Star Awards. COSAT's grant will be matched by IMHRO to establish the COSAT-IMHRO Rising Star Awards Program, which, in 2010, will fund two Rising Star Awards.

The objective of the COSAT-IMHRO Rising Star Awards Program is to advance the understanding of underlying disease mechanisms in bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depression with great potential to benefit patients and the healthcare system. The Program is also intended to advance the translation of discoveries from basic science research into therapies for major psychiatric diseases.

The COSAT-IMHRO Rising Star Awards Program expresses IMHRO and Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development's common vision of transforming individual lives affected by neuropsychiatric illnesses before devastation occurs. It is our hope that this collaboration will fund research of key scientists and may bring us closer than ever to helping find the causes and cures for mental illness.

Dr. Tyrone Cannon, Director of the new Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
photo: UCLA

Director Dr. Ty Cannon says, "We want to develop preventive and therapeutic approaches to reduce human suffering. We need to cut across the traditional boundaries to achieve that. This center will allow faculty to come together, think about problems together, design studies together, and pursue funding together in a way that they otherwise would not."

"We are trying to understand how the brain goes awry in people who have mental disorders,” Cannon says. “We are trying to understand how the structure of the brain relates to the mind in healthy people and all of the ways those processes can go awry. Our new center is aimed right at that intersection. By understanding those connections, we hope to develop therapeutic approaches that can help people."

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