Neuroscience’s interdisciplinary nature is helping attract new talent

Nature India: What are the challenges of setting up a private research institute from scratch and attracting global research talent?

Sumantra Chattarji: The dominant model in India is government-funded research institutions. In the United States, most major institutions/universities are private but receive research grants from the government. CHINTA wants to change that paradigm in India by establishing a privately funded research institute that partners with both government research institutions in India and institutes/universities abroad.

Traditionally, scientists returning home from abroad chose to join government-funded institutes in India. The hope (and the challenge) is to attract some of them to our new model, which is small and nimble, offers excellent facilities, focuses on translational research, and is interdisciplinary and collaborative.

NI: Are there enough career opportunities in neuroscience?

SC: Neuroscience is one of the most exciting areas of science today. Breakthroughs in technologies empower amazing new discoveries. As a result, neuroscience is now attracting young talent from almost all sciences, medicine and engineering disciplines. The essentially interdisciplinary nature of neuroscience is helping attract new talent.

Understanding the brain is one of the last frontiers — and we need all kinds of creative and daring strategies. Indian students have solid foundations in STEM subjects.What they need now is to be brave and move between disciplines – from physics or mathematics to neuroscience, medicine to basic research, psychology to molecular biology, and so on. They need to break away from the barriers imposed by our more traditional educational system.

Funding for neuroscience research comes from diverse sources. In India, apart from the big government agencies such as the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Biotechnology, the Wellcome Trust DBT India Alliance has significantly impacted this area. Support from private philanthropies, such as the Pratiksha Trust and Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, is also instrumental.

There is growing international support. For example, our earlier work on autism received support from FRAXA Research Foundation and Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) in the United States.

NI: What are the key unsolved questions neuroscientists are trying to unravel?

SC: Complex neurological and psychiatric disorders are our big challenges. These include neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and intellectual disabilities; psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression; neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

The challenge is to study the workings and processes within the nervous system underlying these debilitating disorders across biological scales, from behaviour down to synapses, molecules and genes. We will use a combination of pre-clinical and human stem cell-based models teaming up with clinicians and computational scientists to go after these big problems.

NI: For example?

SC: The inherited brain disorder spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA-12), which affects movement, has a higher prevalence in certain sections of the Indian population compared to the rest of the world. Several of these patients are in Kolkata. This offers us an opportunity to study the neurobiology of a neurodegenerative disorder unique to this local context in collaboration with a neurologist who works with these patients. We want to use a multipronged strategy to better understand the disease underpinnings that might give us a roadmap to more effective treatments.

NI: What is the latest in Fragile X Syndrome research?

SC: In several decades, research on Fragile X Syndrome using mouse models has led to several important discoveries in potential molecular targets, opening up avenues to make new drugs. But these discoveries did not necessarily translate into new and effective drugs because of the mixed results reported from various human drug trials. A recent study shifted focus in two ways – it used stem cell-based models to analyze human brain cells prepared from FXS individuals; and it examined astrocytes, the star-shaped brain cells that have received relatively little attention in past studies. We found the mechanisms through which healthy astrocytes can correct the abnormal electrical activity in human Fragile X neurons.

NI: What are the current trends and challenges in the clinical trials landscape in neuroscience?

SC: Three trials on Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) have focused on the metabotropic glutamate receptor and GABAergic inhibition. While an impressive body of basic research established these as promising therapeutic targets, clinical trials yielded mixed results. Translation of discovery neuroscience to delivery remains a challenge in some cases.

NI: How do advancements in computational neuroscience impact the design, execution, and interpretation of clinical trials in neuroscience?

SC: The increasing involvement of AI and machine learning strategies in drug design/discovery is very promising indeed. Clinical trials and clinical studies of patients give rise to massive amounts of data gleaned from a range of genetic, neuroimaging, physiological and related analyses. Novel strategies based on effective synthesis of computational tools, data science and clinical diagnosis will become increasingly impactful in these areas of biomedical sciences in general, and neuroscience in particular.