This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

NIMH grant will fund research on genetic causes of schizophrenia

Researchers from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and University of Michigan have received a 5-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to investigate genetic causes of schizophrenia.

The grant, which could amount to $11.5 million overall, will enable researcher Mike McConnell, PhD, of the University of Virginia, and colleagues to examine brain samples from patients with schizophrenia and those without using single-cell genome sequencing.

Mike McConnell

“Right now, the genetic origins of schizophrenia are incredibly elusive. By looking at the brain and by understanding the genetic causes, we would hope to make better drugs or have better insights into therapeutic regimens to help these patients,” McConnell said in a press release.

While McConnell and colleague Fred H. Gage, PhD, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., use single-cell genome sequencing, researchers from the University of Michigan will use bulk sequencing to assess genomes of pools of cells.

Using these two different approaches may offer a more complete understanding of how genetic variation in brain cells affects human health and disease.

“With bulk sequencing, you get a better resolution of any event that is happening, but the events need to be common. You can’t pick up rare events [using bulk sequencing],” McConnell said. “Whereas in single cells, we don’t have quite the resolution, but we can pick up thing that are one-off events and rare and different. Since we don’t know which of those two differences it will be, we’re doing both.”

A major data sharing initiative will be established so that researchers’ findings are available to the public quickly, following the NIMH’s goal to make research accessible as soon as possible.