Rafael J. Salin-Pascual

Background of Rafael J. Salin-Pascual MD, Ph.D

I was interested in the field of sleep, psychopharmacology and psychiatric diseases since I was psychiatry resident. My Psychiatry's graduate thesis was about the excretion of MHPG (3 methoxi 4 hydroxi methilene glychol) in urine, one of the metabolites of norepinephrine, in human volunteers after a challenge with clonidine. After I finished my residence in psychiatry, I went into master and doctoral program in clinical research, focusing all my work in sleep and depression, and the role of cholinergic mechanisms involved in REM sleep regulation. As a result of that I got my doctoral thesis with the auditory stimulation during REM sleep and how this sleep phase was increased after that manipulation, and then blockade that response with biperiden, an anticholinergic with selectivity for muscarinic M-1 receptors.

In 1984 I had a fellowship for the National Institute of Health, in Bethesda Maryland. USA. I attended first with Dr. David C. Klein and learned some aspects about pineal gland biochemistry, and after that I spent another time with Dr. Wallace Mendelsson and Dr. Lawrence Tamarkin doing some experiments about sleep in animals without pineal gland, also we did some studies about the metabolism of alcohol in syriam hamsters, which was different depending on the animal gender,

In 1989, I went to the Henry Ford Hospital, for to learn sleep medicine under the direction of Dr. Thomas Roth, at the Sleep Research Center. There we did some studies about sleep state misperception, that was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and also we studied the normal distribution of sleep need in the overall population of young people (between 18 and 30 yo). From there, I was invited for a position as a "Visiting Professor", at University of California San Diego, at the Department of Psychiatry, with Dr. J. Christian Gillin as a Mentor. There I did research both at clinical level and basic level at the sleep laboratory. We started working there with transdermal nicotine patches, for to developed a tool for sleep studies in depressed patients and also with the cholinergic system in REM sleep deprivation in animals. We did first a study with normal volunteers, and back to Mexico City, I started doing this research first in animals, cats and rats, and finally with normal volunteers and depressed patients with nicotine, sleep and mood disorders, as a result of that we were able to characterize a wake promoting effect of nicotine, that was dose dependent, and also un major depressed patients, nonsmokers, that nicotine in transdermal patches produced a response in baseline Hamilton scores below 50 %.

The National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) in Mexico granted all the studies with nicotine, for five years. We had several publications about that field, and the overall idea is that nicotine administration, though different pathways (subcutaneously, intravenously, intraperitoneally and transdermal) produced alerting effect, with suppression of both total sleep time as well as REM sleep. In depressed patients, that were non-smoking, we found an increase in REM sleep and a short lasting improvement from depression.

From 1999 to 2000 I had a sabbatical year that was spend at Harvard University, working by invitation with Dr. Priyattam Shiromani, at the Sleep Molecular Laboratory, in several research areas like aging and sleep, effects of caffeine an aging, hypocretin/orexin system manipulation and the development of a model of narcolepsy symptoms in the rat. When I was in Boston, I was invited to become Head of the Psychiatric Service at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition "Salvador Zubiran" in Mexico City, position that I held until this year. Also I became a Full Time Professor of Physiology and the School of Medicine. National University Autonomous of Mexico. Currently I am as a Visiting Scientist at Instituto de Investigaciones Biomedicas de Barcelona (Spain), working with Dr. Francesc Artigas, in basic research with some of the protocols that I presented as an addendum of this Summary of Activities.

My areas of interest in research are sleep regulation and its relationship with psychiatric disorders; Nicotine addiction in psychiatric disorders.

I have received the following award in my career:

1. National Researcher Fellowship. (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores), which is a fellowship that has to be renovated each three years. I have this fellowship since 1988, I have been promoted to level II (from three) in 1999, and I had received my re-evaluation this year (2005) with confirmation at level III (The highest in this system).

2. Special Stimuli Program to the Academic Productivity, from the National University Autonomous of Mexico. The year (2002) I got the higher promotion (Level D).

3. In the year 2003, I received a prize from the "Ecuadorian Society of Biological Psychiatry" and the "Word Federation of Biological Psychiatry Societies". The prize was a medal from the order "Fortunato Safadi", "For your Contributions to the Field of Biological Psychiatry in Latin-Americas".

4. I was President of the Federation of Latin Americas Sleep Societies (2002-2004)

Between 2004 and 2005 I was in Barcelona Spain as Visiting Scientist, in the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomedicas de Barcelona, working with Dr. Fransesc Artigas, in microdialisis and sleep deprivation in rats and also with nicotine challenge and measurement of the release of serotonin at the prefrontal cortex in rodents.

It became Academic of Mexican National Academy of Medicine in 2008.