You asked me to talk about our research in genetics, and how and why we are doing this in different countries. Our belief is that bipolar disorder is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. So very early on when we were planning our research in the states, we realized that we would have to evaluate whatever we’re doing in this county in relation to other environments.

And because I’m from India, it made sense to try and set up a research project in India at the same time as I was setting up a project here. And it has worked out very nicely. In fact we are now also doing some research in Egypt. And our plan is to really try and find genetic factors for bipolar disorder in these different settings and then evaluate them in relation to the different environments.

The research in India presents challenges and opportunities. It was challenging because we had to set up this project de novo — similar research had not been going on in Delhi where we were doing the research. So we had to start with setting up ethics committees and IRB approval and so on.

It’s been very rewarding because people are very cooperative. They’re very helpful once they realize what the research is being done for. Families tend to be more stable in India, and they often stay under the same roof. So very often one can work very efficiently, and this also reduces the cost of doing research. So that’s another benefit.

We basically started small, but then built it up into a network of people who are helping us in terms of hospitals and clinics. So for example, in the United States, we started recruiting in Pittsburgh, realized very quickly that this was not going to be enough. And then extended our network as far away as actually Indiana. And we had a normal approach. We hired research associates in different towns in this region. And trained them up so that they could work almost independently.

So they would go out and interview people and obtain blood samples and then send the information back to us and then review the information they had collected. So this enabled us to have a hub-and-spoke type of system, which has certainly helped with the recruitment.

It is a challenge in terms of keeping track of all the things that are going on or for all the people being interviewed, the data that they’ve been collecting. Not only in terms of the clinical data, but also in terms of the DNA information that we gather in the lab. But it’s part of the fun.