Paul Greengard of Rockefeller University shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for his work on signal transduction in the brain. He and Per Svenningsson, of the Rockefeller and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, write on page 40 about the discovery of DARPP-32 and its subsequent characterization as a master regulator in the brain, integrating signals involved in drugs of abuse as well as schizophrenia and depression. "One of the major challenges was to prove that these pathways were physiologically relevant," Greengard says. "We know much more now that I would have guessed possible 25 years ago."
In 2000, Gene Logic CEO Mark Gessler realized his company was sitting on a potential treasure drove of data from tissue from surgery patients on some form of medication: the data could conceivably be used to identify new uses for marketed drugs. The only problem was that the company lacked the ...