55th Annual Award for Research Recognizes Innovations of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Psychiatry Chairman and Psychiatrist-in-Chief
New York, NY (May 2004) — World-renowned neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and innovative researcher in brain metabolism, Dr. Jack D. Barchas has received the 2004 American Psychiatric Association (APA) Award for Research, the most significant award given for research by the professional organization.
The award — which consists of a $5,000 prize and an honorary plaque, and was presented Tuesday, May 4, at APA's Annual Meeting in New York — recognizes Dr. Barchas' broad-based career as researcher, educator, institution builder, and as a craftsman of biomedical policy. The integration of his leadership skills in these areas has, in the three decades that span his career, transformed our understanding of the neurobiological basis of behavior and changed the institutional face of psychiatric research. After accepting the award, Dr. Barchas delivered a lecture entitled "Adventures in Psychiatric Research: From Neurobiology to Public Policy."
The research career of Dr. Barchas — Barklie McKee Henry Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College and Psychiatrist-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, including Payne Whitney Manhattan and Payne Whitney Westchester — has been driven by a passion to explore and define the reciprocal relationship between neurobiology and behavior. His work occupies a unique place in psychiatry's quest for answers to the most difficult questions in medicine, questions about the biological bases of our emotions and our cognitions, and about the pain and suffering that ensue when they become disturbed.
His research deals specifically with the role of neuroregulators in the brain. Neuroregulators are chemical substances that transmit information between nerve cells, and either act as neurotransmitters or as modulators of neuronal function. The major focus of his work has been devoted to the identification of previously unrecognized neuroregulators; the study of the fundamental control mechanisms of neuroregulators; and the exploration of their role in animal and human behavior, as well as in human mental disorders and addictive states.
For each neuroregulator system studied, Dr. Barchas elaborated neurotransmitter formation, localization, utilization, and inactivation; he performed the first genetic studies of these processes, developed new assays that allowed analyses of smaller brain areas, and identified previously unrecognized neurotransmitters.
A central theme of Dr. Barchas' lab has been the study of the biology of stress responsiveness. His lab was the first to show that neurotransmitters are differently altered by stress. He also was the first to elaborate stress effects on endogenous morphine-like substances, endorphins, leading to his conceptualization and demonstration of important mechanisms of Stress-Induced Analgesia, the whereby stress produces profound inhibition of pain responsiveness.
Dr. Barchas also has been deeply involved in public policy issues. For 12 years, he chaired the Board on Biobehavioral Science and Mental Disorders of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. The Board produced evaluations for the Federal government dealing with health needs and research opportunities. Currently, Dr. Barchas serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New York Academy of Medicine, and Chair of the Association for Research on Nervous and Mental Disorders. He is also President of the Pasarow Foundation, which provides awards for extraordinary scientific achievement in the fields of neuropsychiatry, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. He is currently the Director of the Pritzker Network, which encompasses cross-institutional research efforts involving Cornell, Michigan, and Stanford.
Beginning in the early 1980s and extending into the mid 1990s, Dr. Barchas devoted a major portion of his professional life to the work of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), an arm of the National Academies of Science. Under his leadership as chair, the IOM Board on Biobehavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders expanded its role by proactively initiating studies on controversial policy issues, in contrast to its traditional function of simply responding to legislative and executive evaluation requests. During his tenure as Chair, the Board produced reports that strongly supported basic and clinical research on mental and addictive disorders, and that succeeded in gaining administration backing for research funding in these areas.
Dr. Barchas obtained his medical degree at Yale University School of Medicine. He did his internship at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, his postdoctoral training at the NIH, and his psychiatric residency at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he was a faculty member through 1989. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine as Dean for Neuroscience, and then also as Dean for Research Development. In 1993, Dr. Barchas was appointed to his current position at Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Dr. Barchas has received numerous awards and honors for his research, including the Bennett Award for his discovery of how the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline) is made and metabolized by the brain, and markedly altered by stress and certain drugs.
Dr. Barchas recently finished an eight-year stint as Editor of Archives of General Psychiatry. He is an author of several hundred research papers and has edited a dozen books.
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