Örebro: Tool for drug discovery research in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Research lead

Researchers from Örebro University in Sweden have shown that certain types of skin cells function in a way that is similar to the brain cells that are suspected of playing a major role in schizophremia and bipolar disorder, making them suitable proxies for use in drug discovery.

“Among other benefits, this makes it considerably easier to develop and test new drugs,” said researcher Ravi Vumma,

One of the causes of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is assumed to be that the level of neurotransmitters in the brain is too low. This is because the cells in the blood-brain barrier are not transporting through enough of the amino acids that are needed for the brain to be able to produce these neurotransmitters, including dopamine, noradrenalin, and serotonin.

The researchers mapped how the transport of the two amino acids takes place, finding that tyrosine and tryptophan largely use the same transport system and that the system functions in the same way in both skin fibroblasts and the endothelial cells of the blood–brain barrier.

In addition, they determined that the inward transport of tyrosine in fibroblasts was lower in patients with bipolar disorder, compared with a healthy control group. Since previous research has shown that it was lower in individuals with schizophrenia, this discovery indicates that the two diseases may involve a common alteration that is caused by a common genetic variation.

This means that human skin fibroblasts can be used for studying the transport of both amino acids and drugs that use the same transport system.