Professor Kuan-pin Su and the Mind-Body Interface Laboratory (MBI-Lab) have spared no effort in the study of the causes and treatment of depression. They not only have combined molecular biology, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and genetics to explore the causes of depressive disorders and found new effective and safe therapies for depression with natural nutrients; their series of papers were also cited by depression treatment guidelines and textbooks in Europe and the United States. In recent years, their study of physical and mental disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has also drawn the attention of international clinical and academic fields.

 

Professor Su, along with his international research partners, has worked hard for years to found the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR) in 2013. He served as the founding director of the ISNPR and has become an important scholar in promoting nutritional medicine into the mainstream of psychiatry. In 2015, he published papers in World Psychiatry (impact factor (IF)=27) and Lancet Psychiatry (IF=12), pointing out that the importance of nutrition in the etiology and treatment of depression has been neglected in the medical field, and proposing treatment guidelines and expert consensus. He also set up the Taiwanese Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (TSNPR) in 2016, expecting an integrated medical treatment to benefit clinical psychosomatic patients.

 

The MBI-Lab has been involved in many international and transnational research programs. These programs with Professor Su as the principal investigator include the U.S. National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression program, the National Science Council's Initiative Research Cooperation among Top Universities between the UK and Taiwan program, the National Science Council and the Royal Society Exchange and Cooperation program, a transnational study on the treatment of schizophrenia with Professor John Kane in the U.S., a clinical trial on the prophylaxis of depression of pregnant women with Japan's National Center for Psychiatry and Neurology and University of Toyama, and the National Science Council and the Polish National Center for Research and Development Exchange and Cooperation program.

 

The MBI-Lab team has held the Mind-Body Interface (MBI) International Symposium for the 7th consecutive year, which not only attracted psychiatry and neuroscience experts from the world's leading universities and research institutes to participate, expanding the horizons of psychiatric clinical staff and researchers, but also enabled experts at home and abroad to study and discuss together from a more diverse perspective, promoting international cooperation and exchanges successfully. Through this event, we have established an international communication and cooperation platform to further undertake research in the field of brain neuropsychiatry and raise Taiwan's international profile and strengthen its leadership.