The news comes on the same day as a $650-million donation to expand psychiatric research
Broad population studies are shedding light on the genetic causes of mental disorders. Credit: Thinkstock
Researchers seeking to unpick the complex genetic basis of mental disorders such as schizophrenia have taken a huge step towards their goal. A paperpublished inNaturethis week ties 108genetic locations to schizophrenia most for the first time. The encouraging results come on the same day as a US$650-million donation to expand research into psychiatric conditions.
Philanthropist Ted Stanley gave the money to the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The institute describes the gift as the largest-ever donation for psychiatric research.
The assurance of a very long life of the center allows us to take on ambitious long-term projects and intellectual risks, says its director, Steven Hyman.
The center will use the money to fund genetic studies as well as investigations into the biological pathways involved in conditions such as schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. The research effort will also seek better animal and cell models for mental disorders, and will investigate chemicals that might be developed into drugs.
TheNaturepaperwas produced by the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) a collaboration of more than 80 institutions, including the Broad Institute. Hundreds of researchers from the PGC pooled samples from more than 150,000 people, of whom 36,989 had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. This enormous sample size enabled them to spot 108 genetic locations, or loci, where the DNA sequence in people with schizophrenia tends to differ from the sequence in people without the disease. This paper is in some ways proof that genomics can succeed, Hyman says.
This is a pretty exciting moment in the history of this field, agrees Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the study.
Many of the variations seem to be common, so most people will have some of them but people with schizophrenia have more, and each contributes a small amount to the overall risk of developing the condition. This has made the variants difficult to spot in smaller samples, which is why the PGC collaboration is so crucial, Insel says: If you want to look for common variants, you have to work with a lot of friends.
The large sample size also allowed the researchers to develop an algorithm that would calculate a risk score for each variants contribution to schizophrenia. This could eventually be used to predict who might develop the disorder or to add weight to an uncertain diagnosis of schizophrenia, Insel says. The NIMH is likely to dedicate more money soon towards doing intensive genetic surveys and following the genetic leads that come out of them, he adds.
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More than 100 Genetic Locations Found to Be Linked to Schizophrenia