Document Type : Editorial
Exactly 30 years ago, when I graduated from the Institute of Neuroscience in the Glasgow School of Medicine and returned to Iran, I ended up in the Department of Psychiatry at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Rouzbeh Hospital. To be hones t, in those days after the imposed war, there were no funds for research in Iran, and there was no national plan or desire to develop research. Unfortunately, there was no internet at that time, and due to Iran’s non-subscription of scientific journals, these paper journals for universities were not sent. The nature of the PhD course in the UK is not at all reading the books. In the UK, a good graduate in the PhD program becomes the owner of a school of thought so that he/she can design a plan for the future. I remember in one of the lectures on Tuesday afternoon at the University of Glasgow, a famous neuroscientis t, the title of his lecture was: How a neuroscientist can do research in the North Pole with the lens of his/her glasses. With this attitude, I came to the idea that the research path for me in Iran is drug repositioning in psychiatry (1). Of course, this terminology did not exis t at that time, and in that period, it was mos tly off-label drugs.
During these three decades, inspired by neuroscience, I worked on the use of old drugs in psychiatry (2-7). Almost all of these projects were theses of psychiatry residents or fellows. Now that 30 years have passed, when I think again, I come to the conclusion that it was a good research line for a neuroscientist in the psychiatry department of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. In these 30 years, this has actually been a bridge between basic and clinical sciences. But remember that this is a low-cost way to do research in a developing country and in order to reach the edges of knowledge, there should be increased research funds and a specific 5-year plan for Iran’s scientific development. After the election of the president, Prof. Pezeshkian, to the presidency and the appointment of Prof. Zafarghandi to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, researchers of Iran hope that we will once again return to the road of real development for the scientific development of Iran.
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