New approach to treat schizophrenia

by time news

Targeting calcium signaling in neurons represents a new advance for treating a rare form of schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia can be treated with antipsychotics; however, these drugs only address positive symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, and do not treat cognitive symptoms, such as thought disorder. Despite the availability of antipsychotics, only some patients will respond to them.

One possible solution for developing new therapies for schizophrenia is induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), cells derived from a patient’s blood or skin that can be reprogrammed to become any type of cell in the body, including neurons.

In the current study, Northwestern Medicine researchers created iSPC-derived neurons from two patients with a rare form of schizophrenia containing the 16p11.2 duplication mutation, which increases the risk of developing schizophrenia by 16-fold, and three healthy patients.

Using multiple advanced techniques including calcium imaging microscopy, high-throughput electrophysiology, and RNA sequencing, the researchers found that calcium signaling, when neurons communicate using calcium ions to promote cell signaling and other essential intracellular functions, it functions abnormally in the brain cells of patients with schizophrenia compared to healthy neurons.

Next steps will include using these iSPC-derived neurons to screen for new drugs to treat this genetic form of schizophrenia. If successful, the drugs may be useful in treating patients with schizophrenia in general and other neurological disorders. The 16p11.2 mutation is also a prominent risk factor for autism, therefore these drugs could also be tried to treat this condition.

This study was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

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