| Summary: | This work will present and discuss the utility of immune cells as a cellular model for studying psychiatric disorders. Novel strategic approaches in the field of psychiatry combining non-hypothesis driven global protein profiling with targeted functional analysis were applied in order to identify and classify dysregulated cellular biological process associated with a given disease. This was achieved by using a combination of modern technologies such as mass spectrometry, flow cytometry or multiple enzyme-linked immunosorbent systems. Peripheral blood monoclonal cells, cell supernatants and serum were the main source of investigation providing an easily accessible peripheral model to study functional aspects of the disorders that could be related back to brain. Applying this combination of techniques together with cellular mechanism of action studies the results outlined in this work show that this is a successful approach for the identification of novel altered pathways and the molecules involved therein. These pathways provide further knowledge on the still enigmatic molecular mechanisms and contribute to the understanding of the pathophysiology underlying these mental disorders. They also open new avenues for future investigations on the improvement of therapeutic strategies. Moreover, it is shown, that some of these molecules have the potential to qualify for diagnostic biomarkers, a first step in the direction towards achieving an un-biased and objective diagnosis of psychiatric illnesses.
|
|---|
