Patients' own cells yield new insights into the biology of schizophrenia

Patients' own cells yield new insights into the biology of schizophrenia

April 13, 2011

LA JOLLA, CA—After a century of studying the causes of schizophrenia-the most persistent disabling condition among adults-the cause of the disorder remains unknown. Now induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) generated from schizophrenic patients have brought researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies a step closer to a fundamental understanding of the biological underpinnings of the disease.

In their study, published in the April 13, 2011 advance online issue of the journal Nature, the Salk team reports both that neurons generated from these patient-derived iPSCs made fewer connections with each other, and that Loxapine, an antipsychotic drug commonly used to treat schizophrenia, restored neuronal connectivity in iPSC neurons from all patients.

"This is the first time that a complex mental disease has been modeled in live human cells," says lead author Fred Gage, Ph.D., a professor in the Salk's Laboratory of Genetics and holder of the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases. "This model not only affords us the opportunity to look at live neurons from schizophrenia patients and healthy individuals to understand more about the disease mechanism, but also to screen for drugs that may be effective in reversing it."

Learn more at:
http://salk.edu/news/pressrelease_details.php?press_id=480

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Science & Technology

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• Rusty Gage
• Fred Gage
• Fred
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• Kristen Brennand
• schizophrenia
• schizophrenic
• Neurons
• Synapses
• neuron connectivity
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• IPS
• ipsc
• induced pluripotent stem cells
• stem cells
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• genetics
• Salk Institute
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