The skin cells of four adults with schizophrenia have provided an unprecedented window into how the disease began while they were still in the womb, according to a recent paper in Schizophrenia Research.

The paper was publishedby researchers at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It provides what the authors call the first proof of concept for their hypothesis that a common genomic pathway lies at the root of schizophrenia.

The researchers say the work is a first step toward the design of treatments that could be administered to pregnant mothers at high risk for bearing a child with schizophrenia, potentially preventing the disease before it begins.

The authors gained insight into the early brain pathology of schizophrenia by using skin cells from four adults with schizophrenia and four adults without the disease that were reprogrammed back into induced pluripotent stem cells and then into neuronal progenitor cells.

The next step in the research is to use these induced pluripotent stem cells to further study how the genome becomes dysregulated, allowing the disease to develop.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Faulty genomic pathway linked to schizophrenia developing in utero, study finds

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Skin cells of schizophrenia patients reveal faulty genetic pathway that began in womb - Genetic Literacy Project