Scottish experts aiming to switch off schizophrenia

The team, from Glasgow University, focused their attention on a protein in the body known as DISC1, which plays a role in brain development.

Researchers found that defects in the protein could be rectified with drugs to combat their effects on schizophrenia.

The research, published in the journal Nature, opens up the prospects of new ways of tackling the condition, which affects between two and four people per 1,000 in the UK population. It has been widely thought that DISC1, which plays a vital role in the development of the brain cortex, may also influence the risk of schizophrenia and other disorders such as autism.

This part of the brain is responsible for functions such as memory, attention, thought, language and consciousness, but until now it was not clear how defects in this area developed to cause mental health problems.

The DISC1 protein acts as a "control centre" in the brain by recruiting other types of protein and attracting them together on the surface where they can work to control brain development. Professor Miles Houslay, of the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at Glasgow University, said: "While it is now well-recognised that DISC1 is a major susceptibility factor for these brain diseases, we still don't understand enough about the range of processes it controls and how they go wrong in mental illness."

But the researchers, working with US colleagues from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, Duke University in North Carolina and scientists at Keio University, Tokyo, have now moved a step closer to understanding how the protein could be harnessed for new treatments.

They showed that DISC1 acts as a "molecular switch" that controls two key stages in the development of the cortex.

One of these stages involves how cells in the cortex multiply in development, while the other relates to how brain cells migrate within the cortex to specific locations that allow them to work properly.

This knowledge could be used to design drugs able to correct any defects which lead to problems developing.

"These processes are critical for normal brain function," Prof Houslay said.

"However, as these new results show that DISC1 is a protein whose function can be dynamically regulated, it opens up the possibility of pharmaceutical and biotech companies designing new medicines able to correct defects in DISC1 that lead to the debilitating disease of schizophrenia."

Billy Watson, of the Scottish Association for Mental Health, said: "Schizophrenia is one of the most-misunderstood mental health conditions, and this kind of research is important in helping us understand its causes. It's equally important that we fight the stigma associated with mental health conditions."