RESEARCH UPDATE 2004
 McLean Hospital courtyard with the Mailman Research Center on the right. |
| Research Leadership: A Continuing Tradition |
| When McLean Hospital established laboratories of pathology and psychology and opened facilities for the study of microbiology and chemistry in 1888, they were the first such laboratories for scientific investigation within the Massachusetts General Hospital. They also were the first research laboratories within the clinical setting of any psychiatric institution in the United States. |
| Today, McLean's research program remains based on a union of clinical and laboratory resources for the study of psychiatric disorders. No other psychiatric hospital or university department of psychiatry in the world contains a comparable range of laboratory, brain imaging and clinical research facilities dedicated to the study of major psychiatric disorders. Research requiring special technical procedures is performed in the Mailman Research Center, the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center and the Neuroimaging Center, all on the grounds of the hospital. Research facilities encompass more than three acres of floor space (126,500 square feet), including three buildings (Oaks, the Mailman Research Center and the Neuroimaging Center) entirely devoted to research. |
| Our research addresses psychiatric illness in all age groups of patients and occurs in all treatment settings, from inpatient units to residential centers to ambulatory services. McLean's Institutional Review Board is monitoring more than 300 active clinical studies involving more than 4,700 study subjects, most of whom were inpatients or outpatients at the hospital. |
Funding of Research
The largest portion of revenue for research at McLean is from peer-reviewed, competitively obtained federal grants; more than 70 percent of our funding comes from this source. There are, in addition, growing ties between academe and industry and McLean, which filed for its first patent less than 20 years ago, currently owns 42 patents - 12 of which are under license or are in licensing negotiations. Several licensed inventions are beginning to generate annual maintenance and royalty payments and expected revenues from these sources are projected to grow to $1 million annually over the next few years. Applications are in process on more than 30 additional patents.
Some of our most novel research, as well as training opportunities for young investigators, is supported by donations from private donors. McLean has established several new research projects and fellowships on the basis of gifts.