Large-scale reprogramming and expression analysis of patient-derived neural cells in schizophrenia. Homo sapiens

Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe and disabling brain disorder that impacts an estimated 1 in 100 people. While key symptoms often appear late in adolescence, it is a neurodevelopmental condition with a strong genetic component. Understanding the biology of this disease is difficult because its root causes and presentation vary substantially from person to person. Although therapeutic treatments do exist, they may not be fully effective in every patient and/or do not address all symptoms of the disease.A critical bottleneck in research and treatment development for schizophrenia stems from its biology: namely brain cells and specifically neurons, the most relevant tissue type, are impossible to collect directly from patients. To address this, with support from the NIMH, we leveraged recent advances that allow us to take skin cells (fibroblasts), and convert them into stem cells, which are cells from which all other cells with specialized function are generated. We generated stem cells from over 100 individuals. After generating the stem cells, we converted them into two types of neurons, specifically excitatory or inhibitory neurons. In addition to the gene expression and microarray raw data provided here, we have also deposited the skin cells and stem cells at the National Institutes of Health, for use by all approved researchers. We and others can now use these neurons-in-a-dish to identify genes and pathways that may underly schizophrenia during development.