A Study Of Muscarinic Receptors In Brain Tissue Obtained Postmortem From Subjects With Schizophrenia
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$354,810.00
Summary
The research outlined in this proposal will examine the molecular make up of certain regions of the human brain and determine if components within those regions are altered in tissue from subjects with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric illness that affects approximately 1% of the Australian population and the research described in this proposal seeks to help understand the cause of the illness and-or to assist in the development of new drugs with which to treat the illness. T ....The research outlined in this proposal will examine the molecular make up of certain regions of the human brain and determine if components within those regions are altered in tissue from subjects with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric illness that affects approximately 1% of the Australian population and the research described in this proposal seeks to help understand the cause of the illness and-or to assist in the development of new drugs with which to treat the illness. The goal of the research outlined in this proposal is to determine if there are changes in specific molecules in the brain, termed muscarinic receptors. The muscarinic receptors are one way that a chemical in the brain called acetylcholine can communicate with the nerve cells in the brain. Acetylcholine is known to control important functions of the brain such as in memory, cognition and learning, all of these functions are thought to be affected in schizophrenia. Importantly, the control of all these functions involve muscarinic receptors and therefore, changes in those receptors could well produce some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. We now wish to extend our early studies which suggest there may be changes in muscarinic receptors in the brain of subjects with schizophrenia to determine which of the 5 muscarinic receptors are affected in which region of the brain by the pathology of the illness. From our existing data, we would predict that these studies will add weight to the argument that muscarinic receptors are altered in schizophrenia and provide vital information as to how drugs that target these receptors may be used to treat the illness.Read moreRead less
High-Throughput Screening Of The Genome And Proteome In Postmortem CNS From Subjects With Schizophrenia
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$553,190.00
Summary
Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric illness that effects ~1% of the Australia population. The underlying pathology of the illness remains unknown. This application seeks funding to use new technologies to screen approximately 60% of the expressed human genome and proteome to determine which genes are being differentially expressed in two regions thought to be important in generating the symptoms of the illness, the frontal cortex and hippocampus. This project will generate a large amount of d ....Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric illness that effects ~1% of the Australia population. The underlying pathology of the illness remains unknown. This application seeks funding to use new technologies to screen approximately 60% of the expressed human genome and proteome to determine which genes are being differentially expressed in two regions thought to be important in generating the symptoms of the illness, the frontal cortex and hippocampus. This project will generate a large amount of data, however by comparing the data from subjects with schizophrenia to that from control subjects and subjects with bipolar disorder who were psychotic and being treated with antipsychotic drugs close to death will allow us to identify changes that are specific to schizophrenia. Genes that are expressing different levels of mRNA and protein will become prime targets for future investigations as they are likely to be central to the pathology of the illness.Read moreRead less