Schizophrenia studies go up the nose

Living brain tissue is key to understanding psychiatric disorders. As one might imagine, it is difficult to obtain living brain tissue for a study. Recent studies now suggest that, at least for some purposes, cultured neural stem cells may be studied in order to research disease mechanisms. Is the brain the only place to find these cells? Might other types of cells work just as well?

More and more, schizophrenia research is going up the nose. It might seem odd, but it makes sense because the olfactory mucosa, the sense organ of smell in the nose, is continually regenerating new sensory neurons from stem cells. The olfactory mucosa cells are among the very few cells outside the brain that still connect to the brain.

They can easily be collected by taking a biopsy. By using these small pieces of tissue from the nose, researchers were able to gain access to the stem cells from patients with schizophrenia and compare them to those of healthy people.

“We have discovered that patient cells proliferate faster – they are running with a faster speed to their clock controlling the cell cycle – and we have identified some of the molecules that are responsible,” said Dr. Alan Mackay-Sim from the National Centre for Adult Stem Cell Research in Brisbane, Australia. The natural cell cycle is dysregulated in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia.

“This is the first insight into real differences in patient cells that could lead to slightly altered brain development,” Mackay-Sim added. “. . . When we look closely at the clues to the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, we find new and often unexpected mechanisms implicated.”

Source: ScienceDaily, Biological Psychiatry