Oxidative and Inflammatory Biomarkers As Targets For Novel Therapies – Prof Michael Berk

Professor Michael Berk is currently an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and Alfred Deakin Chair of Psychiatry at Deakin University and Barwon Health, where he heads the IMPACT Strategic Research Centre. He also is an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, the Florey Institute for Neuroscience and Mental Health and Orygen Youth Health at Melbourne University, as well as in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. He is a past president of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders and the Australasian Society or Bipolar and Depressive Disorders. He is an ISI highly cited researcher who has published over 800 papers predominantly in mood disorders. His major interests are in the discovery and implementation of novel therapies, and risk factors and prevention of psychiatric disorders.

Author Quotes  

Summary and slides  

Professor Berk begins his talk with the fact that it has been a long time since any major new discovery was made in pharmaceuticals for psychiatry.  

Taking a look at Eroom’s law (Moore’s law spelt backwards), he presents the rate of decline in pharmaceutical R&D.  

• Moore’s Law: The number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits doubles every year since their invention. 
• Eroom’s Law: The number of drugs discovered halves every year while the cost doubles. 

Continuing, he explains how there are 3 paths currently taken on the road to drug discovery. 

• Testing a single molecular target based on a sound pathophysiological basis. In psychiatry , however, the pathophysiology of major psychiatric disorders is not known and hence no drugs have been discovered in this way. 
• Targeting a byway that aims for a biological system or network e.g. oxidative stress and inflammation 
• Drug discovery through serendipitous clinical findings augmented by clinical observation. This is how most of psychopharmacological discoveries have taken place. 

 Moving on to biomarkers, Prof Berk talks about the holy grail of finding a biomarker for diagnosis. 

He goes on to emphasise how psychiatric disorders appear to be transduced through inflammation and oxidative stress. 

Concluding this video excerpt, Prof Berk presents a fascinating study of how childhood bullying predicts inflammation in adulthood.   

According to the study by Copeland et al.: