• Question: can your job involve trying to create new medicines

    Asked by com462 to Anne, Carolyn, Joe, Mariana, Nick on 25 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Devlin

      Joseph Devlin answered on 25 Mar 2010:

      In a weird way, it kind of does, yes. I use a machine called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) that uses very strong but focal magnetic fields to affect brain responses. Sometimes TMS can be used like a drug to help treat some disorders. For instance, there was a study about two weeks ago using TMS to help treat migraine in people who suffer from it. Turned out to be surprisingly effective and will now go into a larger clinical trial.

      Even though TMS devices are mostly a research tool, in the US it is classified as a drug by the Food and Drug Administration because it was initially marketed to help treat clinical depression. So even though my work isn’t obviously related to drug studies, it does offer the potential to produce a drug-like intervention method in some cases.

    • Photo: Nick Bradshaw

      Nick Bradshaw answered on 25 Mar 2010:

      Thats the idea – although it will probably be at least five years before we are designing any and probably another 10 before anything goes on sale.

      At the moment we are trying to figure out “how schizophrenia works”. We have several proteins which, when they go wrong, can cause the disease (at least in some people). Once we have figured out exactly what the proteins do normally, then we will be able to start coming up with ways to fix them when they go wrong and (hopefully) try to treat the disease.

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