Ebru Ercan-Herb­st

Unrav­el­ing the untapped pathol­o­gy of schiz­o­phre­nia: Hypomyelination

Abstract

Schiz­o­phre­nia is a neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­der that affects about 1% of the pop­u­la­tion glob­al­ly. Despite its high preva­lence, the caus­es of the onset of the dis­or­der remain unknown. Cur­rent evi­dences under­line reduc­tion in myelin integri­ty in the white mat­ter tracts of schiz­o­phre­nia patients, high­light­ing a con­tri­bu­tion of myeli­na­tion in the devel­op­ment of the disease. 

Myeli­na­tion occurs post­na­tal­ly and con­tin­ues until ear­ly adult­hood which coin­cides with the patho­gen­e­sis of schiz­o­phre­nia. Myelin changes shape the neu­ronal cir­cuit func­tion, thus myelin dis­rup­tion may con­tribute to the reduced con­nec­tiv­i­ty between brain regions that has been observed in schiz­o­phre­nia. There­fore, gain­ing mech­a­nis­tic insights into the role of myeli­na­tion in schiz­o­phre­nia is very impor­tant to select an alter­na­tive path­way to treat this disorder.

To unrav­el the hypomyeli­na­tion pathol­o­gy of schiz­o­phre­nia, we explore dif­fer­en­tial­ly expressed genes in neu­rons and oligo­den­dro­cytes from brains of schiz­o­phre­nia patients and healthy con­trols and as well in iPSC-derived oligo­den­dro­cyte lin­eage cells from schiz­o­phre­nia patients with hypomyeli­na­tion pathol­o­gy and healthy con­trols. To study the select­ed can­di­date tar­gets for their role in myeli­na­tion, we uti­lize our estab­lished 3D cul­ture plat­forms of iPSC-derived oligo­den­dro­cyte lin­eage cells and neurons.

Biog­ra­phy

Dr. Ercan-Herb­st pri­mar­i­ly focus­es her research on inves­ti­gat­ing neu­ron-oligo­den­dro­cyte inter­ac­tions and iden­ti­fy­ing the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing myeli­na­tion deficits. Dur­ing her post­doc­tor­al stud­ies at Har­vard Med­ical School, her work cen­tered around autism spec­trum dis­or­ders, where she dis­cov­ered a neu­ronal fac­tor that hin­ders oligo­den­dro­cyte devel­op­ment, lead­ing to deficits in myelination. 

Over the past four years, Dr. Ercan-Herb­st has been lead­ing a team of sci­en­tists at the Bio­Med X Insti­tute in Hei­del­berg. Her research revolves around explor­ing ear­ly inter­ven­tion strate­gies for schiz­o­phre­nia, with a spe­cif­ic empha­sis on the hypomyeli­na­tion pathol­o­gy. In pur­suit of these goals, her team devel­ops phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly-rel­e­vant in vivo and in vit­ro plat­forms. They also employ tran­scrip­tomics analy­sis on post-mortem brain sam­ples to iden­ti­fy poten­tial fac­tors con­tribut­ing to hypomyeli­na­tion pathol­o­gy of schizophrenia.