Abstract
Overall : Lawrence J. Seidman was born and grew up in New York City. He obtained a PhD from Boston University in Psychology and stayed in Massachusetts to work for many years in the Harvard affiliated Hospitals, such as the VA-Boston Healthcare System, Massachusetts General Hospital and at his untimely passing, he was Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. He was about to move to a new phase in his career, assuming a position at Children’s Hospital, Boston. He was a pioneer in the fields of the neuropsychology of schizophrenia, ADHD and related disorders, of using the tools of cognitive assessments and brain imaging to understand the genetic predisposition for serious mental illness, and in the last several years—prediction of conversion to psychosis in individuals at high risk. He contributed to many multicenter collaborations and had several collaborators world-wide, playing an important role in their work. This symposium is conducted in his honor with contributions from key collaborators on different aspects of his work. Drs. Tyronne Cannon and Elaine Walker will both represent the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study (NAPLS) consortium by reviewing its findings in brain imaging and cognition. Dr. David Braff will review the work of the Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia (COGS) multicenter collaboration, in which Dr. Seidman led one of its sites, and Dr. TianHong Zhang from Shanghai will present current data from the Shanghai-Boston SHARP collaboration on early detection of psychosis. The symposium will be concluded by Dr. Keshavan from Beth Israel-Deaconess, who was a close colleague of Dr. Seidman for the last decade. Together they worked side by side exploring many aspects of early detection of schizophrenia and educating trainees and the public on their findings. He will sum up the legacy of Dr. Seidman to the field and how we can continue it into the future.
Highlights
Neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia (SZ), afflict a significant fraction of the population
At a leading SZ-risk locus flanking MIR137, we further examined the functional effects of a prioritized common genome-wide association studies (GWAS) SNP rs1198588 in CRISPR/Cas9-edited human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC), and found that SZ-risk allele of rs1198588 altered MIR137 expression, open chromatin regions (OCRs) dynamics and dendrite arborization/ synapse maturation
Out of the 12 schizophrenia GWAS-implicated SNPs that we found in neuronal OCRs of this single individual, two SNPs showed allele-specific open chromatin (ASoC) and are putatively functional: one lies within the 5’-UTR of CHRNA5 and the other is in the promoter region of VPS45, a Sec1 family gene involved in synaptic transmission
Summary
Larry Seidman, Ph.D. was a key contributor to the Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia (COGS) with its focus on understanding the genetic substrates of quantitative endophenotypes in schizophrenia patients. It is important to note that related association studies examined the relationship of quantitative endophenotypes and genetic loci, and this is complementary to but distinct from case-control studies. These COGS studies identified a 42-gene network with a NRGL-ERBB4 hub underlying schizophrenia neurocognitive deficits. These Ns, modest for case-control studies, are quite powerful for gene finding using quantitative endophenotypic markers related to core “thought disorder” neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Neurocognitive endophenotypes are endorsed by the FDA and MATRICS as treatment targets for schizophrenia itself This allows for data-guided drug and sensory-cognitive remediation of neurocognitive deficits to improve functional outcome in schizophrenia. 21.3 NEUROIMAGING MARKERS OF RISK FOR AND PROGRESSION TO FULL PSYCHOSIS IN THE NAPLS PROJECT
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
