Molecular and Integrative
Neurosciences Department

Introduction

Research in this Department is focused on gaining a better understanding of infectious, environmental and inheritable diseases of the brain and developing molecules that can act to reverse the disease process or stimulate normal repair mechanisms. Working in collaboration with organic chemists and other researchers in The Scripps Research Institute, neuroscientists are developing new drugs for the treatment of brain disorders -- drugs that will be highly selective in their action and have fewer side effects than currently available therapies produced by traditional methods. 

In an effort to understand the mechanisms that lead to disorders of the brain, Scripps Research investigators have focused their efforts on a select number of human brain problems. Among them are drug and alcohol addiction, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, and the dementia of human acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). 

Underlying these highly specific studies focused on various forms of brain and behavioral dysfunction, are interactive research efforts into the still-incomplete inventory of cell-signaling molecules, the mechanisms by which neurons communicate with each other to form functional systems, and the important parallel endeavor into the nature of neuronal-immune system interactions on which much of the Department's unique combination of interests is founded. 

Another primary area of The Scripps Research Institute's research involves the biology of the largely overlooked supportive, immune, and inflammatory cells in the brain. This research decision, to reach beyond neuron-to-neuron events, is another factors that sets the Department's research efforts apart from other groups. 

These efforts are focused in two directions. The first, to determine the way in which viruses find and target cells in the nervous system, disturbing function and often leading to cell death. The second research area seeks to understand the ways in which glial and immune cells in the brain can cause disease. Scripps Research investigators have created new experimental means to either overexpress or reduce the expression of molecules of interest. 

To investigate the human brain and behavior, Scripps Research faculty have created methods that combine non-invasive recording of neurologic with precise structural information on the brain. With these tools, insights are being gained into the behavioral aging of the Alzheimer's diseased brain, the altered sleep patterns in the brains of AIDS dementia patients, and the basis for the genetic vulnerability, or genetic resistance, to alcoholism. A long-term goal of this effort is a detailed computer-based model of the human brain.