Claudio N. Soares, MD, PhD, FRCPC, MBA

Professor and Head of Psychiatry, Queen’s University, School of Medicine, and CAN-BIND Executive Lead, Strategy and New Partnerships, St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto

bh in Brief

Dr. Soares is Professor and Head of Psychiatry at Queen’s University School of Medicine in Kingston, Ontario and the Executive Lead for CAN-BIND – Canadian Network for Biomarker Integration in Depression. He graduated in Medicine, completed a residency in Psychiatry and a PhD in Psychoneuroendocrinology at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He further pursued postdoctoral training in Reproductive Psychiatry and Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he worked as an Assistant Professor and Researcher. His main areas of interest are Mood Disorders, Menopause and the Impact of estrogen on Mood and Cognition in Midlife Women, and the use of Mobile Health (M-Health) technologies in psychiatric research.

He current leads the M-Health Research Platform within CAN-BIND. 

www.canbind.ca

“Treating depression is more than treating the depressed mood.”

Depression is not being sad at difficult times. It is a clinical condition that manifests itself in different ways. Our challenge is to differentiate among the types of depression and find the most effective treatment for each type. The more we understand depression and the ways it affects daily lives, the easier it is to help people restore and maintain their health. 

1. What is CAN-BIND?

CAN-BIND, or the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression, was formed in 2011 with the goal of providing the right treatment for the right person at the right time. It is a consortium of researchers, clinicians and advocates from across Canada that includes patient participation and involves 15 health sciences centres and 10 universities. Its primary sponsor is the Ontario Brain Research Institute (OBI) but it receives support from other sources, including government agencies, foundations and unrestricted grants from industry.

CAN-BIND includes a wide range of projects, involving professionals in many fields. Its focus extends across the life span, from children (including off-spring of people with depression) to the elderly. It takes into account socio-economic factors and encompasses high risk populations like those in inner city and aboriginal communities. Specialists across various disciplines include psychologists and an anthropologist who works with projects to help identify risk factors as well as strategies for prevention and intervention. In each case their aim is to map factors contributing to depression and identify ways to accurately predict who will respond to what treatment. 

2. What is innovative about CAN-BIND? 

Among the most innovative aspects of CAN-BIND is its interdisciplinary approach. Researchers are not confined to their own silos but work with others in different fields as well as advocacy groups, like Mood Disorders of Ontario, and individual patients.  Such collaborative research is a Canadian strength and, in fact, CAN-BIND is unprecedented internationally, with the result that it has attracted world-wide interest and support. 

3. How is technology helping us understand depression better?

Technology is key to CAN-BIND’s work. Because of its collaborative nature, CAN-BIND as a whole generates massive amounts of complex data about depression. Researchers must integrate and find common pathways – or cross-talk – between different types of data, such as lab analyses and neurological images. Such work can only be done with high performance computers that were not available a few years ago – another reason CAN-BIND is innovative. 

At another level, in my own area of specialty – mobile health technologies or M-Health – is the use of wearable devices, tablets and smart phones; these devices can help us understand behaviour associated with changes in mood and depression by collecting real-time data on different aspects such as geographical mobility, duration of speech, volume and range of voice, rhythms of movement, and the number and type of communications. 

4. How will CAN-BIND findings affect the lives of individuals in the workplace?

Treating depression is more than treating the depressed mood. After an individual’s mood improves, cognitive and behavioural issues may remain significant and impairing. CAN-BIND researchers are providing information that will increase our understanding of workplace behaviour at all stages of illness as well as the risk factors that may lead to depression. Given the complexity of depression, the most positive workplace strategy may be to invest in risk reduction, early detection and intervention, as well as overall wellness promotion. 

5. How is CAN-BIND pointing the way to future approaches to diagnosis and treatment?

CAN-BIND is individualizing the management of depression by narrowing diagnoses and recommended treatments down to the type or sub-type level. In future, time will not be wasted with strategies that do not work because it will be possible to identify the most effective treatment from the outset. By showing us how to move away from traditional “one size fits all” medicine, CAN-BIND is pointing to a future of personalized or precision medicine capable of providing solutions for complex problems. bh