Can gene therapy cure depression?
Mental disorders still carry a stigma even in this era of progressive thinkers, a century after Freud conceived of psychoanalysis.
Many are forced to hide behind polite smiles, feeling disgraced by a medical condition they have no control over. Advances in neuroscience research, however, may just change all that.
In a forum for medical students and practitioners at St. Luke’s Medical Center, Quezon City, Dr. Luca Parolari, MD, a PhD candidate at Rockefeller University, discussed current research in neuroscience, putting in fresh perspective the dark, misunderstood world of mental illness.
“Some parts of society are moving forward-women now have more rights, and gay people are more recognised-but depression, for example, is something people still don’t want to talk about,” the 27-year-old Italian told Inquirer Lifestyle.
Mental disorders, Parolari continued, have an organic basis, something that is actually happening in the cells that neuroscientists can work on and improve.
A study published in 2006 showed that by isolating p11, a protein normally present in the brain and in many other cells, laboratory mice displayed depression-like syndromes.
Molecular level
Depression-like behaviours in mice included swimming less, inactivity, and becoming less and less explorative, he said.
“It seems that this happens on a molecular level, inside the cells, so they are very, very small. By changing the p11 levels, we can ultimately affect the behaviour and improve the life of people,” Parolari said.
Increasing the p11 protein is possible through an experimental technique called gene therapy. A gene is inserted into the genome, either in a specific part or the entire body, to change the gene expression of a cell or group of cells.
In the case of depression, gene therapy is delivered to a specific part of the brain.
Nobel laureate and neuroscientist Dr. Paul Greengard of the Rockefeller University in New York led the 2006 study, in which he and his team worked on mice that lacked p11.
The mice, Parolari said, when injected in the brain with a viral vector carrying the p11 gene, showed significant improvement.
Although the experiment still has a long way to go before it can be done on humans, Greengard’s team also compared 17 postmortem brains of those who had been diagnosed with depression during their lives with those who had not. The Korea Herald/Asia News Network
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