Vol 9, No 1- Neuropsychiatry and Cardiovascular Disease
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Manfred Ackenheil came to Rouffach (in Alsace,France) for the first time in 1984, and it was then that I met him.We were both younger men,but we already had the same professional objectives,which we shared until his sudden death on August 1,2006.It is with great sadness that I now stand alone to set out a list of these shared objectives. To give a scientific basis to clinical and therapeutic research in psychiatry.This aims at a permanent,mandatory (if at all feasible) participation of public and private hospital physi- cians in research,so that they contribute to the evolution and improvement of psychiatric treatments. To contribute to the renewal of the systems of disorder classification.This classifica- tion should be innovative,and based on the validation of clinical concepts using nonclini- cal variables such as functional brain imaging,electrophysiological testing,chronobiology measurements,genetic polymorphism of structural and functional brain proteins,and phar- macogenetic variables predictive of clinical course and therapeutic response. Endophenotypes regarding personality disorders are of particular interest. To facilitate the discovery and development of new drugs to treat nervous and men- tal disorders.This will be based on the application of recent technologies such as pharma- cogenomics,proteomics,and microdosing,as well as on the development of new disease models and surrogate variables.These techniques should increase the predictive power of the very early phases of drug evaluation. To improve the image of psychiatry within the field of medicine.This entails having certain requirements as to scientific quality and quantification of findings. Professor Manfred Ackenheil had many of the qualities necessary for achieving the objectives listed above.He had worked in biochemistry and psychopharmacology at the Max Planck Institute for Science.He was elected Professor for Experimental Psychiatry in 1982,and in 1990 he became Head of the Department of Neurochemistry and Clinical Psychopharmacology at the University Hospital of Munich. In memoriam Manfred Ackenheil