The National Alliance for Research in Depression and Schizophrenia (NARSAD) honored scientists who have contributed to better understanding of serious mental illness at its annual symposium last month in New York City.

Ray Fuller, Ph.D., posthumously received the Pharmaceutical Discoverer's Award for discovering fluoxetine (Prozac). Also honored as part of the Eli Lilly and Company research team were Bryan Molloy, Ph.D., and David Wong, Ph.D.

Fuller was a research adviser at Eli Lilly and Company, the position now held by Wong. Molloy is a Lilly Research Fellow.

Gilbert Honigfeld, Ph.D., an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey and former clinical research project director at Sandoz, received the Pharmaceutical Discoverer's Award for developing clozapine (Clozaril) as an antipsychotic treatment.

Paul Janssen, M.D., received the Pharmaceutical Discoverer's Award for developing the atypical antipsychotic risperidone (Risperdal). He is the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica.

NARSAD's two chief research prizes confer $50,000 each on the recipients. The 1996 Lieber Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Schizophrenia went to Paul Greengard, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University in New York. He received the award for his work elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which brain cells communicate with each other.

The 1996 Selo Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Depression Research was split between three researchers. They were Wade Berrettini, M.D., Ph.D., Elliot Gershon, M.D., and J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., M.D. The three contributed to understanding genetic influences on bipolar illness.

Former APA president Herbert Pardes, M.D., received the 1996 NARSAD Scientific Leadership Award. Pardes is dean of the faculty of medicine at Columbia University in New York.

(Psychiatric News, November 1, 1996)