Mechanisms of Schizophrenia: Insights to Unlock the Brain Puzzle and Generate Effective Antipsychotic Drugs

A special issue of Biomolecules (ISSN 2218-273X). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Biology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 1962

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Interests: genes; brain; mouse models of schizophrenia; behavior, pharmacology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Schizophrenia is a devastating psychiatric disorder affecting ~1% of the population, but accounting for 1 in 4 hospital beds in psychiatric clinics. Schizophrenia is characterized by positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, cognitive symptoms such as deficits in working memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility, and negative symptoms such as a lack of motivation. Although antipsychotic drugs (APDs) have been an essential part of psychiatric practice for ~70 years, cognitive and negative symptoms hardly respond to currently available antipsychotic therapy, and therefore represent the main targets of APD research.

Most APDs primarily act by blocking dopamine D2 receptors. Hence, one way to improve the development of APDs is to understand the mechanism of action of the D2R on multiple levels, including gene expression, protein-to-protein interactions, intracellular signaling, synaptic plasticity, neural circuits, and behavioral endophenotypes. It should also be recognized that schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder by origin; hence, it could be prevented if diagnosed at its early stage. Furthermore, the complexity of its psychopathological mechanisms is associated with other molecular–cellular impairments, e.g., hypofunction of the glutamatergic system, altered serotonergic neurotransmission, and bioenergy. Therefore, our Special Issue aims to advance the field of APD development, which will benefit psychiatric neuroscience to unlock this complex brain puzzle.

Dr. Tatiana V. Lipina
Guest Editor

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomolecules is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Dr. Tatiana V. Lipina
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomolecules is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • animal models of schizophrenia
  • antipsychotic drugs
  • brain
  • genes
  • D2R
  • neurodevelopment
  • neurotransmission
  • synaptic plasticity
  • neural circuits
  • genomics
  • proteomics
  • intracellular signalling
  • bioenergetics
  • prevention

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

11 pages, 260 KiB  
Review
‘Whole-Body’ Perspectives of Schizophrenia and Related Psychotic Illness: miRNA-143 as an Exemplary Molecule Implicated across Multi-System Dysfunctions
by John L. Waddington, Xiaoyu Wang and Xuechu Zhen
Biomolecules 2024, 14(9), 1185; https://doi.org/10.3390/biom14091185 - 20 Sep 2024
Viewed by 1528
Abstract
A wide array of biological abnormalities in psychotic illness appear to reflect non-cerebral involvement. This review first outlines the evidence for such a whole-body concept of schizophrenia pathobiology, focusing particularly on cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes, immunity and inflammation, cancer, and the [...] Read more.
A wide array of biological abnormalities in psychotic illness appear to reflect non-cerebral involvement. This review first outlines the evidence for such a whole-body concept of schizophrenia pathobiology, focusing particularly on cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes, immunity and inflammation, cancer, and the gut–brain axis. It then considers the roles of miRNAs in general and of miRNA-143 in particular as they relate to the epidemiology, pathobiology, and treatment of schizophrenia. This is followed by notable evidence that miRNA-143 is also implicated in each of these domains of cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes, immunity and inflammation, cancer, and the gut–brain axis. Thus, miRNA-143 is an exemplar of what may be a class of molecules that play a role across the multiple domains of bodily dysfunction that appear to characterize a whole-body perspective of illness in schizophrenia. Importantly, the existence of such an exemplary molecule across these multiple domains implies a coordinated rather than stochastic basis. One candidate process would be a pleiotropic effect of genetic risk for schizophrenia across the whole body. Full article
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