Cranfield Health's Dr Carla Toro has received a GBP18,000 funding boost for her research into the causes and treatment of schizophrenia.
The money was part of the GBP50,000 Margaret Temple Award funding pot, which is made available to researchers each year and is distributed by the British Medical Association (BMA).
Toro, a lecturer in biomedicine at Cranfield University, will work on a project entitled 'DISC1 and neurogenesis in schizophrenia: A post-mortem study of the human hippocampus' for two years and will seek to develop an understanding of the genes that trigger a disease affecting one per cent of the population.
Current drug treatments are not effective for all schizophrenia symptoms and can cause numerous side effects, but it is hoped that Toro's research will result in an improved drug target for the treatment of the disease.
'Disturbed in Schizophrenia 1' (DISC1) is a gene that mutates in patients with schizophrenia at a much greater frequency than the general population.
Laboratory studies have hinted that the gene has a role in the generation of nerve cells (neurogenesis) in a brain region thought to be particularly affected in schizophrenia, called the hippocampus.
Toro's research will assess the mutations in the DISC1 gene carried by deceased patients with schizophrenia and compare this with those with no history of psychiatric illness.
