The Stanley Center for Experimental Therapeutics in Psychiatry is multidisciplinary research program at the University of Pennsylvania that is dedicated to the treatment and understanding of Schizophrenia. Research in the Center is divided between the development of innovative treatment strategies and basic science studies related to the neurobiology of schizophrenia. Additionally, The Center collaborates with researchers and clinicians in The Schizophrenia Research Center at Penn, as well as Engineers at Penn & Drexel University.

Current research programs include:

Development of long-term delivery systems to increase medication adherence

The Stanley Center for Experimental Therapeutics is a national leader in creating and advocating for the use of long-term delivery systems to help people with schizophrenia remain on medication. Noncompliance with medication is the major reason for poor clinical outcome in schizophrenia today and up to 80% of people with schizophrenia are not able to take their medication as prescribed. There are many reasons for poor compliance, including difficulties with access to medication, side effects and poor insight into the illness and the consequences of not taking medicine. Most people can achieve periods of remission on medicine. However, difficulties arise when periods off medicine lead to relapse, poor judgment and further decline. During these periods of relapse, patients' decisions are clouded by psychosis and often do not reflect their own best interests. Long-term delivery systems are designed to increase patient autonomy by allowing people to make their own treatment choices while they are well, rather than during periods of relapse.

Initial work has focused on creation of a prototype formulation that delivers haloperidol for up to 14 months in animals. A small disc is placed under the skin and dissolves slowly to release medicine. Future studies will extend this approach to additional medications as well as seeking approval for phase I clinical trails aimed at demonstrating safe use in humans.

 

The Stanley Center for Experimental Therapeutics participates in a collaborative effort through the Nanotechnology Institute to create long-term oral delivery systems. The goal of these studies is to create a 2-week pill as an alternative to depot injections.

 

The Stanley Center for Experimental Therapeutics is also dedicated to understanding the neural basis for brain abnormalities in schizophrenia in an effort to improve future treatments. One approach to achieve this goal is through the use of animal models.

People with schizophrenia are thought to have abnormal brain responses following auditory stimuli (sound). Although it is not known how this abnormal brain activity is related to symptoms, it provides a method to study neuronal abnormalities in people with the illness. Although the complex symptoms of schizophrenia cannot be modeled in animals, abnormal neural activity following auditory stimuli can be recreated in mice in order to study the underlying biology of this phenomenon. These patterns of neural activity in response to noise are called sensory processing. In order to examine the neural basis of abnormal sensory processing in schizophrenia, we are studying the genetics and cellular biology of sensory processing in mice that share schizophrenia-like patterns of neural activity following auditory stimuli.