A UCLA center that focuses on the early detection of and preventive intervention in schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses has received a gift of $5 million from the family of Garen K. and Sharalyn King Staglin.

In addition to providing critical start-up funds, the Staglins have pledged $3.5 million to establish an endowment for the center.

"We get asked for charitable donations all the time, but Shari and I had no doubt that this center is worthy of our support," said Garen Staglin, president and CEO of eONE Global, a worldwide provider of technologically advanced transaction processing systems, software and professional services, and a director of three public companies. The Staglins also own the acclaimed Staglin Family Vineyard in Napa Valley, one of the largest vineyards owned by a single family, which Shari Staglin operates.

"Shari and I hope our gift will be an inspiration to others to support many important projects in the UCLA College," said Staglin, chair of the College Campaign Cabinet. "The UCLA College is very successful at creating opportunities to match the specific passion and interests of donors with the needs of the College. The College has needs for faculty support and graduate student support in many subject areas, where donors can play a vital role."

The UCLA College currently has a Campaign UCLA goal of $315 million by the end of 2005. The College has raised more than $230 million toward that goal.

The Staglin Family Music Festival Center for the Assessment and Prevention of Prodromal States is named for the Staglins' annual music festival, which has raised more than $22 million in nine years for mental health charities and research. The word "prodromal" refers to the period immediately prior to the onset of psychosis and is marked by behavioral, cognitive and social deterioration.

The center's mission is to reduce the likelihood of initial psychotic episodes and decrease the severity and frequency of psychotic illness in high-risk adolescents. The center aims to identify genetic, neural and behavioral indicators of who is most at risk for psychoses so that preventive treatments can be offered, and to determine the changes in the brain during adolescence that allow prodromal and psychotic symptoms to form. This knowledge could lead to new treatments targeted to compensate for the specific brain pathology that causes psychoses.

"Mental illness causes the annual loss of $40 billion in productivity and other costs in the United States. For example, 40 percent of the homeless population and 20 percent of the long-term prison population suffer from mental illness," said Shari Staglin, a director of the UCLA Foundation and Board of Governors.

"Millions of Americans either suffer from schizophrenia or have loved ones who do," said Garen Staglin. "Shari and I are very fortunate that we have the capacity to attempt to make a real difference in this enormous mental health issue. We knew our gift would have a significant impact in the UCLA College, where the center's researchers are working to prevent the onset of psychotic symptoms and reduce the severity of symptoms in adolescents at risk for developing schizophrenia and other mental illnesses."

"It gives us great satisfaction to know that we are playing a vital role in UCLA's mission as well as working in partnership to support research and clinical programs focused on such a debilitating disease," he added. The gift by the Staglins, who met as undergraduates at UCLA, is the largest to endow a center in the UCLA College, and one of the largest gifts overall to the College.
The center performs screening evaluations and enrolls patients in research studies, offering preventive treatment free of charge to the patients and their families, as the cost of treatment is underwritten by the Staglins. At UCLA's Staglin Family Music Festival Center, world-class researchers use molecular, genetic, neuroimaging, neuropsychological and clinical approaches to analyze the onset and course of schizophrenia.

"Walk-on-water" professor
To head the center, the Staglins said they wanted the UCLA College to appoint a "walk-on-water professor" in schizophrenia research and that Tyrone D. Cannon is "absolutely" such a professor.

"I envision a day when schizophrenia ceases to be a debilitating disease," said Cannon, who is the center's director, UCLA's Staglin Family Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and a research scientist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. "With early intervention, we hope to be able to prevent progression of schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. "Our focus will comprise brain mechanisms and the underlying causes of psychotic illnesses, with the goal of effective early intervention," Cannon said. "We hope to identify the signature of the triggers of psychoses. The ultimate promise is that early detection will lead to therapies that are genetically or pharmacologically based that will correct for defective proteins. This kind of discovery is definitely on the horizon.

"We're particularly interested in understanding how the functioning of the brain changes as psychotic illness begins to take hold," Cannon said. "We use functional MRI and other approaches to study this problem. We may be able to develop novel methods for early intervention, particularly if we can understand how different systems of the brain are coordinated to allow people to have integrated thought, perception, social relations and emotions, and how that coordination goes awry, and if we can understand the molecular, genetic and cellular basis for these systems.

"Our mental health system is largely reactive," Cannon said. "If we react only when things reach a crisis stage, that's very late.

"Our psychological and pharmacological interventions are designed to reduce the likelihood of an initial psychotic episode, decrease the severity and chronicity of psychotic illness, and increase social functioning and the likelihood of stable employment," Cannon said. "I am optimistic our program will be successful."

Insights into schizophrenia
Slightly more than 1 percent of the population is afflicted by schizophrenia, including more than 2 million Americans. Males typically get schizophrenia in their late teenage years, and females in their early 20s.

The symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, hearing voices, disordered thinking, unusual speech and behavior, and social withdrawal. Seventy percent of patients hear voices, typically making derogatory comments about them, in the third person, Cannon said. Patients commonly have delusions, often involving persecution. Their thinking and speech are disorganized, and they may have a greatly reduced interest in social activities, and a reduced energy level. The earliest signs include sleep disturbance, depressed moods and declines in school functioning.

Significant advances have been made in our understanding of schizophrenia in the last five years. "There's every reason to believe the scientific pace of research is picking up, particularly in the domain of gene discovery," Cannon said.

Cannon led a team of UCLA scientists who in 2002 reported that they used a novel three-dimensional mapping technique to identify regions of the brain where people with schizophrenia have significantly less gray matter than their identical twins and the rest of the population. Schizophrenia patients have significant reductions of gray matter in regions of the brain that integrate, interpret and organize information, Cannon and his colleagues reported. Their research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 5, 2002.

"We are all bombarded with information, but we can organize it and create coherence," Cannon said. "Typically, we shut a lot of things out. Schizophrenia patients, however, have fewer connections in regions of the brain that synthesize all of the sounds we receive and information we process. They have great difficulty sorting out information, and lack the ability to selectively focus and organize knowledge. We have found that while schizophrenia patients appear not to have fewer neurons in the brain, the neurons make weaker connections in regions that synthesize information.
The researchers analyzed detailed maps of gray matter for the subjects, using novel brain-mapping techniques, and analyzed the subjects' DNA.
"We begin life with far more neural connections than we will ever use, but lose huge numbers of the connections among brain cells in late adolescence," Cannon said. "In the regions of the brain that govern the synthesis of information, a critical threshold may be required for integrated cognitive activity. If people fall below this threshold, they may be unable to sustain normal cognitive activity; the resulting disintegration of cognition may then manifest as hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder and the other symptoms of schizophrenia."

Future research may reveal whether schizophrenia patients have many fewer connections to begin with and cross this hypothetical critical threshold during the normal pruning process that occurs during adolescence, or whether they lose connections at a faster rate than normal during adolescence.

The promise of that discovery and related work is that scientists may eventually pinpoint the molecular mechanisms that cause this loss to occur, and perhaps be able to halt the process, to prevent or reduce the loss.

In previous research, Cannon also has identified the fundamental importance of genetic factors, showing that schizophrenia is more than 80 percent genetic, and that the environmental influences most likely depend on genetic factors as well. The trigger to schizophrenia may be related to prenatal disturbances in brain development in critical periods during gestation, Cannon believes, although the symptoms do not emerge until late adolescence or later.

The Staglin Family Music Festival Center receives federal funding for research from the National Institute of Mental Health and other agencies. The center receives no state funding. Some two-dozen UCLA faculty members are affiliated with the center.

About the Staglins and the music festival
After several financial successes in the venture capital industry and information technology companies, the Staglins purchased a 62-acre ranch with a 50-acre vineyard in Napa Valley's Rutherford Bench. Since 1986 they have been producing wine from their estate, and have established their vineyard as one of the most critically acclaimed in Napa Valley. Their 1989 chardonnay was served to Queen Elizabeth during the first joint luncheon of both houses of Congress, and most recently their 1996 cabernet sauvignon was served at a lunch for President Bush, hosted by Prime Minister Tony Blair, at No. 10 Downing St.

The Staglins became very active in supporting mental health research and treatment after their son, Brandon, contracted schizophrenia. Brandon subsequently graduated with honors from Dartmouth, and is currently working as a writer and marketing media designer for Staglin Family Vineyard. The Staglins also support research and treatment of depression, and are active in the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.

Their private foundation, the Rutherford Foundation, raises funds for mental health charities and research through The Music Festival for Mental Health. The annual event includes an afternoon concert for 400, a gourmet dinner with wines from more than 60 of the best wineries in Napa Valley and other premier regions of the country, and a symposium with distinguished scientists, as well as scientific lectures. All of the music festival's expenses are underwritten by its sponsors, and all proceeds go to scientific research. In addition to UCLA, beneficiaries of the music festival include the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression; University of California, San Francisco; and Stanford. Jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis and his trio performed at last year's festival.

The Music Festival for Mental Health is the most successful wine-related fundraiser without an auction for any cause in the country. Shari Staglin organizes the annual music festival, and together with the vineyard staff, works tirelessly to ensure its success.

"An event of this quality is especially effective at raising awareness and reducing the stigma associated with mental illness," Shari Staglin said. Too many victims go untreated because they are afraid to come forward and seek help or are unaware of the treatments available," Garen Staglin said. The 10th music festival will be held on Sept. 11. For more information on the music festival, call (707) 944-0477 or e-mail infor@staglinfamily.com.

Also supporting the Music Festival's cause is the Staglins' "Salus" label wine, 25 percent of whose sales are donated to mental health research.

Cannon said, "It's an amazing partnership with the Staglins. Garen and Shari have as much passion about the illness I study as I do, as well as the ability to appreciate the importance of science in attempting to unravel these mysteries and develop approaches to prevent these conditions."

Patients and families may contact the center

UCLA's Staglin Family Music Festival Center also addresses other forms of psychoses, including bipolar disorder, and depression with psychotic features.

"Garen and Shari Staglin have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the understanding, prevention and treatment of schizophrenia through their advocacy for, and support of, mental health research and treatment," said Judith L. Smith, acting executive dean of the UCLA College. "It is fitting that the Staglin name will be forever associated with UCLA and this outstanding center dedicated to improving the health and lives of young people facing the early symptoms of psychoses."

The Staglin Family Music Festival Center expects to perform screening evaluations on more than 100 patients annually, and to treat some 300 patients and their families in the next 10 years. "UCLA is unique in its ability to collaborate across departments," Garen Staglin said. "The center brings together scientists from such fields as psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, neurobiology, radiology, genetics, medicine and brain imaging."

The center is looking for participants for a study. Participants should be individuals ages 12-35 who are experiencing recent changes in their thoughts, feelings and behavior, such as unusual thoughts, distorted or heightened perceptions, ideas of special identity or abilities, suspiciousness, or odd behavior. Other changes may include reduced concentration, reduced energy, depressed mood, sleep disturbance, withdrawal from family or friends, trouble with work or school, anxiety, or irritability. Individuals who are experiencing difficulty functioning and who have a first-degree family member with a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia, also are encouraged to contact the center.

Subjects in the two-year study will participate in clinical, neuropsychological, psychophysiological and magnetic-resonance-based neuroimaging assessments. Participants in the research program also are offered treatment services, psychiatric and psychological, at no cost to the individual. To participate or to receive more information, call the center at (310) 206-3466.