"Schizophrenia Drug Screening Improved Through Use Of Patient-Derived Cells"
Neural cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells can give insight into what drugs might treat schizophrenia, according to a new study. Current drugs to treat people with schizophrenia are only effective in a portion of patients, as about two-thirds either don't respond to treatment or only partially respond. However, a lack of models has limited the ability to develop new therapies, the authors of the new study said. As they reported in Nature Communications, researchers led by Kristen Brennand, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience, genetics and genomic sciences, and psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, developed neural progenitor cells from 12 individuals with schizophrenia and from 12 controls and used those to test how a range of drugs influenced gene expression. "There is tremendous value in gene expression-based drug screening using patient-derived cells because it can generate results that are more reflective of disease biology,” said Dr. Brennand. "The results should be immediately applicable not only to drug discovery for schizophrenia but also more broadly to a wide range of diseases for which more biologically relevant screening models are long overdue,” said Adam Margolin, PhD, the director of the Icahn Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- Kristen Brennand, PhD, Associate Professor, Neuroscience, Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Adam Margolin, PhD, Chair, Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Senior Associate Dean, Precision Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai