Schizophrenia - Future Research (1)

Professor Daniel Weinberger predicts that because of recent progress in genomic research, the future for schizophrenic research is extremely promising.

I believe the future is brighter for schizophrenia research than at any time since there has been schizophrenia research. The reason for this is that we now, for the first time after well over a century of dedicated researchers studying this disease, have the first truly objective clues to the basic mechanisms of causation and that is the genes. Genes are clues to the biological and biochemical pathways in cells that build our brains. We assume then in schizophrenia something about the building and wiring of these brains has gone slightly and subtly awry. The genes will provide us with ways to understand these derangements. We’ve never had this before. Genes will identify people at risk, genes will hopefully identify strategies that might allow better intervention and prevention. Genes should identify new targets for the development of new drugs, not by changing the genes but every gene is an entry point into a biochemical pathway in a cell. Many of these genes will converge on critical nodes in these pathways. Cells are complicated biological machines. We will look for certain critical nodes in these pathways that can be targeted by new drugs. So these are extraordinary opportunities now in schizophrenia research to define basic mechanisms of disease, to identify at risk people, to more judiciously treat people based on genetic variation, and to find and discover new targets for therapy.