At the invitation of Prof. ZHEN  Xuechu, Prof. Alan Frazer, Chairman of Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas Southern Medical Center, San Antonio and Editor-in-Chief of “International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology”gave a lecture titled as “Preclinical Studies of Relevance for Treatment Refractory Depression” on June 11 in Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica,CAS.

Depression not only severely disturbs the life and work of the patients, but also bring heavy burden on the family and the whole society. Prof. Alan Frazer focuses on pre-clinical and pharmacological research of antidepressant drugs. In the lecture, he introduced antidepressant and reported its mechanism of action on nerves. Meanwhile, he indicated that change in female estrogen levels might contribute to the higher susceptibility to depression compared with men.

The splendid report was very enlightening and triggered heated discussion among the attendees.