TrujilloPaumier

Though psychiatric disease is considered a disorder of the brain, the ability to understand mental illness at the level of the brain's disordered molecules and neural networks is only now emerging.

We see this with Ricardo Dolmetsch, a member of our faculty who has a child with autism. He has converted skin cells from people with a type of autism into stem cells, then converted these into brainlike balls of neurons. By studying these neurons, he has determined some ways in which these cells are distinctive, and has found a drug that corrects the abnormalities in vitro. He describes what he’s done as creating a human behavioral disorder in a petri dish — or at least the ability to more deeply study it that way.

This approach could transform behavioral and mental health research, as Thomas Insel, MD, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, explains in a recent blog post: “This would be the stuff of neuroscience fiction — if it weren’t real. This is nothing less than a way to reprogram a patient’s easily obtained skin cells into his or her own neurons, theoretically allowing us to fathom the secrets of that specific individual’s disorder. And, perhaps someday, to use the information to inform that patient’s treatment — or maybe even engineer a one-on personalized treatment.”

This leap forward is not just happenstance. Decades of creative and painstaking basic research funded by federal and state agencies have made these advances possible. In the case of Professor Dolmetsch’s work, funding for stem cell research was particularly valuable.

While a national political debate swirls, scientists are making discoveries about stem cell development that are leading to tools for psychiatric research. At Stanford, we’re leaders in the emerging science of neuronal stem cell biology.

Marius Wernig and Gerald Crabtree, two of our faculty who also happen to be friends and neighbors, amazed the biomedical world by independently developing two different methods of converting skin cells directly into neurons, skipping the stem cell stage entirely. Indeed, when Professor Crabtree looked through his microscope and saw neurons, he didn’t believe what he was seeing. They published their discoveries within a few months of each other last summer.

Researchers throughout the world are pursuing similar strategies to study a range of illnesses involving the brain, including schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease. Their accomplishments are not only extraordinarily useful for testing potential treatments and studying the intricacies of brain cells, they’re a testament to the power of science.

When you consider that we can transform an ordinary skin cell into the elaborately branched architecture typical of a neuron, and that the resulting cell functions as a neuron should, incredible new insights and discoveries seem possible. The important connections between investments in basic research and their impact on health and disease also become more apparent.

In this issue you’ll read how new understandings about the brain are influencing psychiatry. You’ll also see that we are far from grasping all the answers. But the amazing developments in our laboratories give us reason to believe that many of those answers are on the horizon. They underscore the importance of continued investments in basic science research.

Sincerely,
Philip A. Pizzo, MD
Dean
Stanford University School of Medicine
Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Professor, Pediatrics, Microbiology and Immunology