September 15, 2006

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--A Comprehensive Neuroscience Center (CNC) will lay the foundation for developing a world-class program in interdisciplinary neuroscience research, clinical care and education at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham).

The center was approved by the UA System Board of Trustees at its meeting today.

“Neuroscience represents one of the most important areas of modern biomedical research,” said Robert R. Rich, M.D., senior vice president and dean of the UAB School of Medicine. “Despite significant advances in understanding many basic neurological processes in the past 15 years, development of more effective treatments for neurologic and psychiatric diseases is a large and growing unmet medical need in this country.”

The center will link a variety of disciplines, including neurology, psychiatry, neurobiology, neurosurgery, psychology, vision science and biomedical engineering. Faculty from the schools of Medicine, Optometry, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Dentistry, Engineering, Health Professions and Public Health will be affiliated with the center.

“The UAB Comprehensive Neuroscience Center will be among the first of its kind in the United States and will serve as a model for other institutions to emulate,” Rich said. “It will allow UAB clinicians and scientists to make meaningful progress in understanding the mechanisms of brain function and dysfunction, and ultimately to develop disease prevention and treatment strategies for a host of neurological disorders.”

Rich said the CNC will place UAB in the forefront nationally in efforts to understand and treat nervous system diseases such as brain and spinal cord injury, dementing illnesses, schizophrenia, depression, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, autism and other neurological and psychiatric diseases.

“One in three Americans will be affected by nervous system disease during their lifetime,” said Kevin Roth, M.D., Ph.D., UAB professor of pathology and director of the new CNC, “and the economic cost is estimated at $500 billion per year in the United States alone.”

The UAB CNC will oversee the development of six thematic programs of neuroscience investigation: neurodevelopment and neurogenetics; neurodegeneration and experimental therapeutics; neuroregeneration and plasticity; behavioral and cognitive health; glial biology in medicine; and neuroimaging.

“The CNC will be the epicenter for neuroscience research at UAB, facilitating the efforts of existing centers, such as the Center for Glial Biology in Medicine, the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, the Civitan International Research Center and the Alzheimer’s Disease Center,” said Roth. “By interacting directly with existing centers and establishing coalitions of centers and neuroscience subdisciplines, the CNC will help UAB to effectively meet the challenges of modern neuroscience investigation.”

The CNC builds on other recent advances in neuroscience at UAB, including a $8.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Alabama Neuroscience Blueprint Core Facility awarded earlier this month. The Neuroscience Blueprint establishes research infrastructure on campus that will be shared by investigators from institutions across Alabama and the Southeast. UAB has also added dynamic new leadership in the neuroscience fields including the following new chairs: in neurology, from Emory University, Ray L. Watts, MD, in neurobiology, from Baylor College of Medicine, David Sweatt, PhD, and in psychiatry, from the University of Michigan, James Meador-Woodruff, MD.