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A
team of UST researchers led by Associate Professor of Biochemistry
Dr Hannah Hong Xue has achieved a remarkable success. They have
identified the fifth gene linked to the cause of schizophrenia,
the devastating neurological disorder that affects around 1% of
the world's population.
Life can be unbearable for victims of the disease,
and of course their families. Its most common symptoms include
delusions, hallucinations, disordered thoughts and paranoia. "Not
many people realize that there are over 15 million sufferers of
schizophrenia in China alone" Dr Xue, told Genesis. "60
per cent of those people are so incapacitated they can't
work, and another 20 per cent need constant hospitalization."
Now though,
Dr Xue and her team have discovered a haplotype - a pattern of DNA
sequence variations between individuals that may be associated with
predispositions to various diseases - of five Single Nucleotide
Polymorphisms in a gene that is strongly linked with schizophrenia.
Their new findings, published in the latest edition of the Molecular
Psychiatry journal, are of huge international importance and
will give hope to anyone touched by the effects of the affliction.
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"Our discovery of this gene, one of
five to cause schizophrenia so far identified, opens new
paths for the effective treatment of the disease," Dr
Xue said. "As we start to improve our understanding
of schizophrenia, customized and hopefully affordable drugs
can be developed for a patient, tailored to their exact medical
needs. Some degree of prevention of schizophrenia will also
become a possibility."
As things stand, drugs
are currently administered to schizophrenia patients on a
trial-and-error basis. Caring for them is also extremely expensive.
US data indicate that it costs US$20 billion a year to look
after schizophrenics - hardly surprising when you learn that
many sufferers need round-the-clock care.
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Dr Xue's
breakthrough also represents a major accomplishment in genetics
research on ethnic Chinese: Her haplotype was discovered in a test
group solely made up of Chinese people, marking the first occasion
that a gene associated with a complex disease has been identified
in the Chinese population before it was discovered in any other
ethnicity.
This amazing
achievement is all the more remarkable given that during the Cultural
Revolution Dr Xue was made to quit high school after just two years
to go and work in the countryside.
Luckily for
all of us, her education didn't end in the fields. Having completed
a medical degree in Shanghai in 1983, her PhD at the University
of Toronto in 1992 and postdoctoral research at the Department of
Genetics and Robinson Institute of Biotechnology, University of
Glasgow, in 1995, Dr Xue has no intention of resting on her laurels.
Her upcoming
goals include the study of a drug that will apply her latest research
findings for the treatment of schizophrenia. She will also continue
her involvement in the international haplotype map (HapMap) project,
building the next generation of the human genome map.
In common with Dr Xue's
other work, HapMap aims to identify even more of the detailed genetic
differences that predispose us to diseases like cancer, diabetes
and mental disorders - and to ultimately improve life for all of
us by expanding the boundaries of science until cures can be found.
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A
Chinese first
New
genome blueprint
