Archive | 2021
Induced pluripotent stem cells for modeling schizophrenia pathogenesis
Abstract
Abstract Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder affecting 1% of the population worldwide with a grave disability and socio-economic burden. It was hypothesized that the pathogenesis of SCZ starts during early development long before the actual onset of symptoms. However, the lack of disease-relevant early developmental tissues has hampered the effort to further clarify the developmental etiology of SCZ. Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology allows the generation of such developmental tissues allowing us to explore early developmental molecular and cellular endophenotypes from patients with SCZ. This chapter will critically summarize iPSC studies to model SCZ, discussing cohort selection criteria, reprogramming strategies, and neural differentiation methods. We will also discuss the disease-relevant phenotypes of neural progenies derived from SCZ iPSCs. iPSC-based SCZ modeling will broaden our understanding of the biological mechanisms of SCZ pathogenesis and contribute to the development of better treatment options.