News Releases & Research Results Unbalanced neuronal fate specification associated with psychoses: Insights from research on brain organoids derived from induced pluripotent stem cells

News Releases & Research Results

Outline

The results of the international collaborative research project conducted by the Research Scientist (at the time of research) Tomoyo Sawada and Team Leader Tadafumi Kato of the Laboratory for Molecular Dynamics of Mental Disorders, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The key results of research are as follows:

  • Using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cerebral organoids and neural progenitor cells from three pairs of monozygotic twins discordant (affected or unaffected) for schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) or schizophrenia, the research group discovered that unbalanced specification of excitatory and inhibitory neurons during human brain development underlies psychoseis.
  • The results of this research should facilitate the elucidation of the pathology of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic-depressive psychosis), and the development of preventive/therapeutic modalities for them.

This research project was conducted with the support of the Research Center Network for Realization of Regenerative Medicine and the Platform Program for Promotion of Genome Medicine by AMED.

The results of this research project were published online in Molecular Psychiatry, a scientific journal, on August 7.

Article

08/07/20

Last updated 08/07/20