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

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.

• 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.

Sawada T., et al. Developmental Excitation-Inhibition Imbalance Underlying Psychoses Revealed by Single-Cell Analyses of Discordant Twins-Derived Cerebral Organoids Molecular Psychiatry
DOI：10.1038/s41380-020-0844-z