Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder with a world-wide prevalence of 1%. The pathophysiology of the illness is not understood, but is thought to have a strong genetic component with some environmental influences on aetiology. To gain further insight into disease mechanism, we used microarray technology to determine the expression of over 30 000 mRNA transcripts in post-mortem tissue from a brain region associated with the pathophysiology of the disease (Brodmann area 10: anterior prefrontal cortex) in 28 schizophrenic and 23 control patients. We then compared our study (Charing Cross Hospital prospective collection) with that of an independent prefrontal cortex dataset from the Harvard Brain Bank. We report the first direct comparison between two independent studies. A total of 51 gene expression changes have been identified that are common between the schizophrenia cohorts, and 49 show the same direction of disease-associated regulation. In particular, changes were observed in gene sets associated with synaptic vesicle recycling, transmitter release and cytoskeletal dynamics. This strongly suggests multiple, small but synergistic changes in gene expression that affect nerve terminal function.

Rationale: Acute respiratory distress syndrome is refractory to pharmacological intervention. Inappropriate activation of alveolar neutrophils is believed to underpin this disease's complex pathophysiology, yet these cells have been little studied.Objectives: To examine the functional and transcriptional profiles of patient blood and alveolar neutrophils compared with healthy volunteer cells, and to define their sensitivity to phosphoinositide 3-kinase inhibition.Methods: Twenty-three ventilated patients underwent bronchoalveolar lavage. Alveolar and blood neutrophil apoptosis, phagocytosis, and adhesion molecules were quantified by flow cytometry, and oxidase responses were quantified by chemiluminescence. Cytokine and transcriptional profiling were used in multiplex and GeneChip arrays.Measurements and Main Results: Patient blood and alveolar neutrophils were distinct from healthy circulating cells, with increased CD11b and reduced CD62L expression, delayed constitutive apoptosis, and primed oxidase responses. Incubating control cells with disease bronchoalveolar lavage recapitulated the aberrant functional phenotype, and this could be reversed by phosphoinositide 3-kinase inhibitors. In contrast, the prosurvival phenotype of patient cells was resistant to phosphoinositide 3-kinase inhibition. RNA transcriptomic analysis revealed modified immune, cytoskeletal, and cell death pathways in patient cells, aligning closely to sepsis and burns datasets but not to phosphoinositide 3-kinase signatures.Conclusions: Acute respiratory distress syndrome blood and alveolar neutrophils display a distinct primed prosurvival profile and transcriptional signature. The enhanced respiratory burst was phosphoinositide 3-kinase-dependent but delayed apoptosis and the altered transcriptional profile were not. These unexpected findings cast doubt over the utility of phosphoinositide 3-kinase inhibition in acute respiratory distress syndrome and highlight the importance of evaluating novel therapeutic strategies in patient-derived cells.

Genomic technologies have the potential to greatly increase the efficiency of the drug development process. As part of our tuberculosis drug discovery program, we used DNA microarray technology to profile druginduced effects in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Expression profiles of M. tuberculosis treated with compounds that inhibit key metabolic pathways are required as references for the assessment of novel antimycobacterial agents. We have studied the response of M. tuberculosis to treatment with the mycolic acid biosynthesis inhibitors isoniazid, thiolactomycin, and triclosan. Thiolactomycin targets the ␤-ketoacyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) synthases KasA and KasB, while triclosan inhibits the enoyl-ACP reductase InhA. However, controversy surrounds the precise mode of action of isoniazid, with both InhA and KasA having been proposed as the primary target. We have shown that although the global response profiles of isoniazid and thiolactomycin are more closely related to each other than to that of triclosan, there are differences that distinguish the mode of action of these two drugs. In addition, we have identified two groups of genes, possibly forming efflux and detoxification systems, through which M. tuberculosis may limit the effects of triclosan. We have developed a mathematical model, based on the expression of 21 genes, which is able to perfectly discriminate between isoniazid-, thiolactomycin-, or triclosan-treated M. tuberculosis. This model is likely to prove invaluable as a tool to improve the efficiency of our drug development programs by providing a means to rapidly confirm the mode of action of thiolactomycin analogues or novel InhA inhibitors as well as helping to translate enzyme activity into whole-cell activity.

IBS-D and PI-IBS patients are associated with TNFSF15 and TNFα genetic polymorphisms which also predispose to Crohn's disease suggesting possible common underlying pathogenesis.

The molecular basis of schizophrenia is poorly understood; however, different brain regions are believed to play distinct roles in disease symptomology. We have studied gene expression in the superior temporal cortex (Brodmann area 22; BA22), which may play a role in positive pathophysiology, and compared our results with data from the anterior prefrontal cortex (BA10), which shows evidence for a role in negative symptoms. Genome-wide mRNA expression was determined in the BA22 region in 23 schizophrenics and 19 controls and compared with a BA10 data set from the same subjects. After adjustments for confounding sources of variation, we carried out GeneGO pathway enrichment analysis in each region. Significant differences were seen in age-related transcriptional changes between the BA22 and the BA10 regions, 21.8% and 41.4% of disease-associated transcripts showing age association, respectively. After removing age associated changes from our data, we saw the highest enrichment in processes mediating cell adhesion, synaptic contact, cytoskeletal remodelling, and apoptosis in the BA22 region. For the BA10 region, we observed the strongest changes in reproductive signalling, tissue remodelling, and cell differentiation. Further exploratory analysis also identified potentially disease-relevant processes that were undetected in our more stringent primary analysis, including autophagy in the BA22 region and the amyloid process in the BA10 region. Collectively, our analysis suggests disruption of many common pathways and processes underpinning synaptic plasticity in both regions in schizophrenia, whereas individual regions emphasize changes in certain pathways that may help to highlight pathway-specific therapeutic opportunities to treat negative or positive symptoms of the disease.