Researchers from the University of Iowa are using stem cells to discover new treatments for psychiatric disorders. It is an innovative approach that identifies how the psychiatric problems impact the brain and how they might be treated.
Dr. Aislinn Williams, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa, is leading the research team. For many years, Dr. Williams has been studying how the brain controls behaviour and how a malfunctioning brain can cause psychiatric disorders.
Dr. Williams and her team are converting skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). They are powerful stem cells that can be turned into many other types of cells. They then prompt the iPSCs to turn into brain cells (neurones).
Once they have a patient’s neurones, they can analyse how the cells develop, how well they communicate with each other, how they respond to chemical stressors and much more. The researchers are essentially using stem cells to gain insight into how a person’s brain is working at a cellular level.
The research team is also using stem cells to determine how the genes that increase a person’s risk of mental illness affect brain cells. This will give researchers much greater understanding about how genes contribute to psychiatric problems.
One common genetic risk factor for mental illness involves the voltage gated channel — a protein that modulates how rapidly electrical signals pass between neurones. This protein has been identified as a risk factor for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and many other psychiatric disorders.
Using stem cells, the research team can closely monitor how the protein affects neurones. They can then test new drug treatments on the neurones to see if they alter cellular activity. This is a much more precise way of determining the efficacy of drug treatments than animal or human trials.
The researchers expect to learn much more about how mental illnesses work from the research. At the moment, it is very difficult to determine what triggers bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and what effect they have on the brain. Using stem cells in this way may help researchers discover the root cause of many serious mental illnesses and developing effective treatments.
Source: Brain and behavior: Using stem cells to study psychiatric disease
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