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Great news this week! In the January 6 issue of Science, it was reported that scientists under Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard of the Rockefeller Institute have come one step closer to a cure for depression. The Rockefeller institute is discovering the basic mechanisms of mental illnesses that have plagued man since the beginning of time.

The newest story is that current drugs for depression work on the neurotransmitter serotonin to alleviate the sometimes devastating symptoms. There seems to be an even more basic cause for depression than serotonin and this is the p11 protein, which appears to regulate how the brain uses serotonin. Drugs that regulate p11 may not be a cure for depression, but they would get much closer to the biological root of the disorder.

As if his research into the causes of depression weren't enough, Dr. Greengard amazed me two years ago with his November 21st paper in Science titled Diverse psychotomimetics act through a common signaling pathway. This paper dealt with DARPP-32 and its relationship to schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. To oversimplify things, P11 is to depression what DARPP-32 is to psychosis.

The good news is that Dr. Greengard and his team started a company called Intracellular Therapies whose website is http://www.intracellulartherapies.com. This company is currently working on new treatments for psychosis. It is not clear yet if this same company will work on treatments for depression utilizing p11 in some way or if that effort will be organized in a different way.

Let’s hope the National Institute of Health gives intracellular therapies some kind of monetary assistance to speed their research along. It could happen.

According to Google News, 184 articles around the world, written in English, have been published about this breakthrough in understanding of depression. When the DARPP-32 article came out, there were no more than 20 articles published around the world about it. This unbalanced reporting shows how swept under the rug schizophrenia and psychosis is when compared to depression.

Depression has fewer stigmas attached to it than schizophrenia, which means that less dollars are spent to find a cure for schizophrenia. As someone who suffers from schizophrenia, I am very frustrated by this. Thank God for Dr. Greengard and the Rockefeller University. They've done so much with so little.