Newswise — Dr. Erminio (Mimo) Costa, retired director of the psychiatric institute and professor of biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and world-renowned expert in neuropsychopharmacology, has died.
His death occurred Nov. 28 while he was visiting in Washington, D. C., and the cause was complications due to multiple myeloma, according to colleagues.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Costa played a prominent role in the development of modern pharmacology and neuroscience. He was the author of over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
"Professor Costa was a rara avis even among academic scientists, with tremendous passion for his work and the people that worked with him," said Dr. Joseph Flaherty, dean of the UIC College of Medicine. "He was a pioneer in the brain chemistry of illness and health."
Costa's scientific achievements include groundbreaking studies of the neurotransmitter serotonin that established that the brain chemical is a target for antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs. He introduced instrumental methods for measuring neurotransmitter levels that facilitated the study how psychotropic drugs work in the brain.
Costa's studies of the molecule cyclic AMP in the early 1970s were among the first to show a regulatory action of this molecule in the activation of a specific gene, a mechanism now considered to play an important role in depression and in the mechanism of dependence on drugs of abuse.
He first proposed and discovered that the receptor for GABAA, another important brain neurotransmitter, is the target of benzodiazepines, a class of drugs used in the treatment of anxiety. His exploration of the GABAA receptor led to the discovery of the molecular mechanisms underlying tolerance and dependence on these drugs. This discovery has enabled neuroscientists to probe the action of other neurotransmitters.
At UIC, Costa's work centered on finding better treatments for schizophrenia. His research suggested that two specific neurotransmitters were less expressed in the brains of schizophrenia patients, and that this was associated with changes in molecules that turn on the genes for those neurotransmitters. These studies pointed to the possibility that an epigenetic mechanism -- changes in gene expression in response to the environment -- underlies schizophrenia.
"Dr. Costa was an incredibly passionate leader and outstanding scientist in the field of neuroscience," said Dr. Alessandro Guidotti, scientific director and professor of biochemistry and psychiatry at UIC and a frequent collaborator. "He was a creative, dynamic, indefatigable scientist, teacher, editor, organizer -- and most of all, a catalyzer of people and ideas. Dr. Costa has been a major force in the field of neuroscience over the last half a century."
Costa fostered collaborations with more than 300 neuroscientists from China, Japan, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria, as well as European and Middle Eastern countries. More than one hundred colleagues, representing every continent, attended his retirement party in October.
Costa was born in Cagliari, Italy and received a medical degree from the University of Cagliari in 1947. He continued at the university, attaining the rank of professor of pharmacology by 1954. In 1956, he joined the Thudichum Research Laboratory in Galesburg, Ill.
In 1958, Costa was recruited by Dr. Bernard B. Brodie, considered by many to be the father of modern pharmacology, to the National Institutes of Health, where he eventually became deputy chief of the National Heart Institute's Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology. In 1965, he joined Columbia University as director of pharmacology at the W. Black Center for the study of Parkinson's disease, but three years later he returned to the NIH, where he founded and directed for 17 years the Laboratory of Preclinical Pharmacology of the National Institute of Mental Health at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington.
In 1985 Costa founded and became director of the Fidia-Georgetown Institute for the Neurosciences at Georgetown University. In 1994, he became McDonnell Visiting Professor in Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis and director of the Center for Neuropharmacology at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, N.Y.
In 1996, at age 72, Costa was invited to direct a research program in psychiatry at UIC, where he recruited a team of top scientists focused on research into the causes of schizophrenia.
Costa is survived by his wife, Ingeborg Hanbauer, and sons Michael and Max. His late son Robert, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the UIC College of Medicine, died in 2006 from pancreatic cancer.
Arrangements are pending. Donations to the UIC psychiatry department for the Erminio Costa Memorial Lecture Series can be sent to Carla R. Ross, UIC Department of Psychiatry, Room 551, M/C 912, 1601 W. Taylor St., Chicago, IL 60612.
[Editor's note: Photos of Dr. Costa are downloadable at http://newsphoto.lib.uic.edu/main.php/costa+erminio/]
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