Vernon Carruthers, PhD
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD
Viviana Pszenny, PhD
University of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Following up studies possibly linking Toxoplasma gondii to schizophrenia, will develop new medications using cysteine proteases, which may be useful as ancillary medications.

P. Jeffrey Conn, PhD, et al.
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Nashville, TN
Will screen a library of over 150,000 compounds to find candidates for potentiation of the mGluR5 receptor as a treatment for schizophrenia.

Seena Fazel, MD
University of Oxford
Oxford, England
Martin Grann, PhD, MSc
Karolinska Institute
Stockholm, Sweden
Using the Swedish psychiatric case register, will compare approximately 250 individuals with psychosis who committed homicides and 500 who did not, in an effort to identity predictors of violent behavior after hospital discharge.

Shitij Kapur, MD, PhD, et al.
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Will perform preclinical studies on L-stepholidine in preparation for clinical testing of this drug in schizophrenia.

Jack Lenz, PhD, et al.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, NY
Will study the HERV-K retrovirus in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and controls to ascertain its possible role in etiology. Retroviruses constitute 8 percent of the human genome, are incorporated into genes, and are suspected of playing a role in several diseases.

Russell Margolis, MD
Susan Holmes, PhD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Baltimore, MD
In 100 individuals with schizophrenia and 20 controls, will look for microinsertions and microdeletions in genomic DNA using a novel array-based comparative genome hybridization technique. Such chromosomal abnormalities may be important in genetic aspects of etiology.

James Meador-Woodruff, MD
Robert McCullumsmith, MD, PhD
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
Will use the Stanley Neuropathology Consortium and the Mt. Sinai Brain Bank to measure levels of NMDA receptor trafficking proteins.

Patrik Medstrand, PhD
Lund University
Lund, Sweden
Will study retroelements, which act as promoters of human genes, as possibly being dysregulated in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Retroelements include retroviruses and other mobile genetic elements; it is known that one- quarter of all human genes have a retroelement incorporated within their mRNA transcript.

Laura Niemi, MD, et al.
National Public Health Institute
Helsinki, Finland
Using the Helsinki register of children born to mothers who had schizophrenia, will study growth measures, school performance, and aspects of the mothers’ illness to look for predictors of psychiatric illness and criminal behavior in the offspring.

Vishwajit Nimgaonkar, MD, PhD
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
and Graduate School of Public Health
Pittsburgh, PA
Following up studies showing that some patients with schizophrenia who also have antibodies to cytomegalovirus have symptom improvement on antiviral medication, will study single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to try to identify which patients are most likely to respond to such treatment.

Art Petronis, MD, PhD
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Using tissue from the Stanley Array Collection, will map hyper-methylated sequences of DNA and their relationship to endogenous retroviruses.

Mikhail Pletnikov, MD, PhD, et al.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Baltimore, MD
Will study the DISC-1 gene, which has been associated with schizophrenia, in cell culture and in animals, to determine the molecular mechanisms by which this gene affects brain development.

Evgeny Rogaev, PhD, et al.
Academy of Medical Sciences
Moscow, Russia
Will use bioinformatics and brain samples to identify non-coding RNA and microRNA and their relationship to endogenous retroviruses.p>

Christoph Schmitz, MD, et al. Maastricht University
Maastricht, Netherlands
Will utilize a unique Polish brain collection to examine markers related to cerebral cortex development from the fetal period through to adulthood.

Philip Seeman, MD, PhD
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
To follow up on initial work begun in 2002, will further characterize gene expression changes that are produced by antipsychotics and changed in an opposite direction by amphetamine sensitization in animals. Will then map the pathways relevant to these genes to try to develop new avenues for treatment.

Jaana Suvisaari, MD, PhD
National Public Health Institute
Helsinki, Finland
Using data from a Finnish general health survey, will compare approximately 100 individuals with psychoses to controls on multiple measures of physical health to ascertain possible medical causes of their psychoses (e.g., homocysteine) and to assess the effects of medication on health indicators.

Raphael Viscidi, MD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Baltimore, MD
Using the Stanley Array Collection, will measure polymorphisms for endogenous retrovirus stop codons and sequence the full genes for 2 envelope proteins.