PhD candidates Karen Laupman and Nathaniel Bell, with supervisors Associate Professor Vivi Heine and Professor Danielle Posthuma, have been awarded a Proof of Concept (PoC) grant for €55.000 from Amsterdam Neuroscience for their innovative research on repurposing drugs specifically for schizophrenia (SCZ).
Their project aims to explore and validate new therapeutic avenues for SCZ by integrating genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with a unique computational and cellular approach.
This research utilizes induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology to develop a disease model that reflects the complex genetic landscape of SCZ. The team will analyze transcriptomic and proteomic data from iPSC-derived neural cells to identify disease signatures. These signatures will then guide a drug repurposing pipeline, seeking compounds that can mitigate disease-related transcriptomic and proteomics alterations.