IPA - Bulletin -
Volume 17, Number 3 - IPA RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP: A VERY GOOD STAR
IPA Bulletin
Where Are They Now?
IPA RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP: A VERY GOOD START
Orestes V. Forlenza
IPA Research Scholar, 1996
[Editor's Note: This article is another in our series, "Where Are They Now?" by
former IPA Research Scholars who are writing about their current activities and
describing how IPA recognition has influenced their careers. The IPA Research
Scholar Program was sponsored and supported by Pfizer Central Research, Pfizer Inc.]
Three years after completion of my IPA Research fellowship in London,
I realize that my six-month experience at the Institute of Psychiatry
prompted rewarding effects on both my clinical and academic careers.
Indeed, a lot of work has been done since then, and fruitful results have
been harvested. I am most thankful for such a fertile opportunity to
learn and grow professionally. Also, I want to express my deep
gratitude to my host and supervisor, Prof. Anthony Mann, as well as to
Dr. Simon Lovestone, with whom I made my first steps in neuroscience.
Between October 1996 and April 1997, I was able to participate in sever-al
academic programs at the Institute of Psychiatry, clinical seminars at
the Maudsley Hospital, and research activities at the Section of Old Age
Psychiatry. The formal agenda proposed becoming acquainted with
pharmaceutical trials with anti-dementia drugs, which was possible to
undertake in parallel with other running studies at the Section, as well
as a 10-week advanced MSc course on research methodology in
Psychiatry, offered by the Section of Epidemiology and General
Practice. With Simon Lovestone's group at the Department of
Neuroscience, I started what is today my primary work, i.e., the study of
molecular mechanisms of tau pathology in Alzheimer's disease. The
effect of muscarinic agonists on the phosphorylation state of tau is the
backbone of my PhD thesis, which I concluded in June 2000.
Although too brief a period to become familiar with molecular biology,
this experience was indeed a good start. Shortly after returning home I
was invited by Prof. Wagner Gattaz to join his group on a multidiscipli-nary
project to study membrane phospholipid activity in Alzheimer's
disease and schizophrenia. We were awarded a grant of US$1.5 million
for this project by our local funding institution, FAPESP, the State (of
Sao Paulo) Foundation for Research Support, which enabled us to open
and fully equip a new neuroscience laboratory. We have very good fund-ing
prospects here for future work related to this area, including the
possibility of hosting foreign researchers.
In addition to maintaining contact with the London group, I began
further collaboration in neuroscience with Prof. Abraham Fisher (Israel)
and other local groups at the University of São Paulo, namely the
Neurology group (Prof. Ricardo Nitrini and Dr. Paulo Caramelli) and the
Department of Rheumatology (Prof. Eloísa Bonfá and Dr. Vilma Viana).
Work with Prof. Luis Barbeito (Uruguay) is to begin in the near future.
Also, I have been collaborating with the neuroscience group at the
Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, São Paulo branch. Headed by
Prof. Ricardo Brentani and Dr. Vilma Martins, this group is currently
looking at possible physiological mechanisms of cellular prion protein
in neuronal biology. The experience on primary neuronal cultures that I
accumulated during my IPA fellowship was essential to establish new
investigation models and to validate previous findings. In the academic
field, again thanks to contacts made through IPA, I have been involved
in two WPA publications, namely the WPA/PTD Educational Program on
Depressive Disorders (volume 3), "Depressive Disorders in Older
Persons," and the WPA series, Evidence and Experience in Psychiatry
(volume 1), "Depressive Disorders." Further, I have been working with
Dr. Paulo Caramelli as editor of the first Brazilian "Compendium of
Geriatric Neuropsychiatry." With over 60 chapters written by local and
international contributors, it is the first textbook in the field to be pub-lished
in Portuguese. We hope it will be a useful educational tool for
primary care health professionals.
I also have been working clinically with elderly patients, both in hospital
and outpatient settings, which is, from my point of view, the ultimate
reason for investing in scientific and academic projects.
My IPA Research Scholar experience at the Institute of Psychiatry was
both exciting and encouraging, not only for enabling my technical
development in Geriatric Psychiatry and Neuroscience, but also for
making it clear to me that collaboration with colleagues is essential to
broadening our current state of knowledge.
Orestes V. Forlenza, MD, MPhil, PhD (Brazil) was
born in 1966 and attained both his medical and psychi-atric
qualifications at the University of São Paulo. He
has been interested in Geriatric Psychiatry since 1994,
after finishing his MPhil study in the field of Organic
Psychiatry and looking at the psychiatric and neuropsy-chological
complications of cerebral cysticercosis.
His academic and clinical involvement with psychogeriatrics started
with the establishment of the Old Age Psychiatry Clinic at the Institute
of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo in 1994, which was made possible
by the joint efforts of local colleagues, including Drs. Osvaldo Almeida,
Cássio Bottino, and Alberto Stoppe Jr. This service, of which Dr.
Forlenza was the director from January-September 1996, offers medical
and psychological care for elderly patients from a catchment area of
about 1,400,000 inhabitants.
Dr. Forlenza helped to organize two international workshops on
psychological and pharmacological strategies for the treatment of
major psychiatric disorders in the elderly. He and his colleagues also
were the local organizers of IPA's Regional Meeting in São Paulo in
1997. (Institute of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of São
Paulo, Brazil, Rua Dr. Ovídio Pires de Campos s/n CEP 05403-010,
São Paulo S.P. Brazil, e-mail: forlenza@usp.br)
