Brain research and clinical psychiatry: establishment of a psychiatry brain bank in Japan

The Japan Agency of Medical Research and Development (AMED) has approved the budget for the 5-year project called Establishment of the JAPAN Brain Bank Network, which commenced in 2016. This project was established with the aim of storing brain tissue samples to enable research on the etiologies and mechanisms of psychiatric diseases, which would eventually improve standards of clinical treatment for these diseases. Japanese researchers in the field of biological psychiatry have historically depended on Western brain banks, particularly from Europe and the United States, which is regrettable. To remedy this situation and improve the Japanese research standards, attempts for establishing an autonomous Japanese brain bank are ongoing. Reviews of the previous attempts on elucidating the etiopathology of neuropsychiatric diseases reveal that rapid advances result from studies on tissue samples from diseased brains. For example, in the Kraepelin era, i.e. in 1900 years before and after, long-term, resolute research on diseased brain specimens ultimately led to the discoveries of entities such as Alzheimer disease and Lewy body disease. The recent advances in techniques of neuroimaging and molecular biology have resulted in a shift of interest from brain tissue analysis. However, the integration of findings of all these techniques is recommended going forward, with a shift in focus back to brain tissue analysis. The JAPAN Brain Bank Network project was launched under this setting. The success of this project largely depends on the will of patients and family members (for donating samples) as well as cooperation among many clinicians. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the history of biological psychiatric research and related perspectives, which will hopefully encourage further studies that will help bridge the gap between clinical and biological research on psychiatric diseases.