January 26, 2016
Aislinn Williams, M.D., Ph.D., is part of the Prechter Research Team and is currently the inaugural NAMI Unger Research Fellow at the University of Michigan. She wrote the following article for the NAMI Washtenaw County “Connections” newsletter:
As you may have read in the last NAMI Washtenaw County newsletter, I am the inaugural NAMI Unger Research Fellow at the University of Michigan. The fellowship is designed to support a junior scientist who also functions as a “research ambassador” to the NAMI membership.
I hope to provide information to NAMI members about the science behind mental illness research, and learn from NAMI members about their perspectives on health, wellness, and how science could be more helpful. My mission is to interface with the NAMI community through visits to affiliate meetings, presentations at NAMI conferences and conventions, and newsletter contributions.
At the Paths to Recovery Conference this past October, I was thrilled to see so much interest in research among NAMI members, and I was grateful for the opportunity to share some of my research projects with you. My scientific work focuses on how problems during brain development contribute to developing bipolar disorder later in life. For this project, people with bipolar disorder have donated skin samples, which we turn into pluripotent stem cells (which are similar to embryonic stem cells), and then into brain cells like neurons and glia. This all happens in petri dishes, where we can watch the cells with microscopes to see how they change or respond to specific chemicals or medications.
In the media, this scientific method is sometimes called “brain in a dish.” Scientists can model many different kinds of brain disorders this way, including many neurologic and psychiatric conditions. We hope that by using this approach, we can understand how genes contribute to bipolar disorder and try to develop new treatments and diagnostic tools. These kinds of studies may also help in the development of more patient-specific treatments, so that doctors can provide individualized, personalized, and precise treatment plans that minimize side effects and maximize treatment responses.
While my research is in its early stages, scientists the world over are realizing the potential of using patient-derived stem cells to study disease. There is much optimism that projects like these will unveil new insights into human brain development and disease pathology.
My hope is that by participating in NAMI activities, interested members will feel comfortable approaching me about research-related questions, so that the efforts of those of us doing the science can better match the needs of the NAMI community.
Find the full newsletter here.