The pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are not well understood. This renders effective long-term treatment of these disorders quite difficult.
In the brain’s communication system, nerve cells transmit messages across the synapse, the minute gap between cells. On the receiving end, the postsynaptic density (PSD) is a network of proteins suspected of playing a role in causing psychosis and mood disorders. In the first research study to identify specific PSD-associated genes and proteins linked to bipolar disorder or mania we examined a brain region known to play a role in bipolar disorder and utilised recent technological advances in proteomics, the large-scale study of proteins. Proteomic methods have greatly enhanced scientists’ ability to identify and quantify disease-associated protein changes from specific genes.
The investigation uncovered more than 1600 proteins within the PSD, of which almost 500 were altered in the bipolar disorder samples compared to the control samples. Among those 500, the team pinpointed a small subset as being clearly associated with the pathophysiology of the disease, and now with this project want to identify and confirm the critical cellular processes in which these proteins are involved. Together the data provides robust evidence implicating the PSD in bipolar disorder and will hopefully provide clues to new pathways as targets for new treatments
