A Dishful of a Troubled Mind: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells in Psychiatric Research

Abstract

Neuronal differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells and direct reprogramming represent powerful methods for modeling the development of neurons in vitro. Moreover, this approach is also a means for comparing various cellular phenotypes between cell lines originating from healthy and diseased individuals or isogenic cell lines engineered to differ at only one or a few genomic loci. Despite methodological constraints and initial skepticism regarding this approach, the field is expanding at a fast pace. The improvements include the development of new differentiation protocols resulting in selected neuronal populations (e.g., dopaminergic, GABAergic, hippocampal, and cortical), the widespread use of genome editing methods, and single-cell techniques. A major challenge awaiting in vitro disease modeling is the integration of clinical data in the models, by selection of well characterized clinical populations. Ideally, these models will also demonstrate how different diagnostic categories share overlapping molecular disease mechanisms, but also have unique characteristics. In this review we evaluate studies with regard to the described developments, to demonstrate how differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells and direct reprogramming can contribute to psychiatry.

Genetic Expression of Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 7 in Schizophrenic Patients Using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

“…In a systematic review done in 2016, publications were reviewed until June 2015.They found only 80 publications in using induced pluripotent stem cell in psychiatry: 48 research articles and 33 reviews. Research in schizophrenia contributed with 33% (approximately 16 articles) (18) . These 16 articles targeted different topics such as mitochondrial changes, genetic expression, synaptic connections, etc.…”