Substance Abuse

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITIONS:
- Head of the Psychopharmacology Unit, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Bristol University

- Head of Community Based Medicine - Professor of Psychopharmacology, Bristol University

- Head of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit, Centre for Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Imperial College London,

HONOURS:
- Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

- Visiting professor in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

- President of British Association of Psychopharmacology and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology

ANY INDUSTRY POSITIONS:
Consultancies - Pfizer (W-L), GSK (SKB), MSD, Esteve, Novartis, Asahi, Organon, Cypress, Lilly, Janssen, Takeda, Phamacia, Therasci, Passion for Life, Hythiam, Servier, Roche, Sanofi Aventis, Actelion, Lundbeck, Wyeth.

Speaking honoraria (in addition to above) Reckitt-Benkiser, Cephalon.

Grants or clinical trial payments: MSD, GSK, Novartis, Servier, Janssen, Yamanouchi, Lundbeck, Pfizer, Wyeth, Organon, AZ, Cephalon, P1vital, MoDefence, NHS - Dr Nutt holds shares in GSK (ex-Wellcome)

Worked for the UK Government's Committee on Safety of Medicines; Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, British National Formulary.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
The goal of the department is to pioneer research into neuro-psychiatric disorders merging pharmacological approaches with state-of-the-art imaging techniques. The particular emphasis is on brain disorders such as addiction dementia schizophrenia and affective disorders.

Recent discoveries include clarifying the role of dopamine in both schizophrenia and opioid addiction - the discovery of an antagonist of the memory-blocking properties of alcohol - showing opioid receptors are involved in alcohol as well as heroin dependence and developing new potential PET tracers for studying noradrenaline and imidazoline receptors in conditions such as depression and dementias.

There are close links with the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre where DJN and ALH have conducted PET imaging studies for many years and also with the GSK Clinical Imaging Centre, which is collocated in the Burlington-Danes building alongside the dept. DJN leads an international consortium underthe EuroBioFund program that is seeking new PET tracers to allow measurement of endogenous neurotransmitter release in the human brain.