RSVP CONTACT: Dr. Joe Schulman or Carrie Hall, Office: 661-702-6700; Cell Phone: 661-645- 1003
Monday, March 19, 2007; 8:00 PM
"A Mouse Model of Human Autism Based on Maternal
Viruses: Adult Neural Stem Cells, Schizophrenia, and the Immune Connection"
by
Prof. Paul H. Patterson, Ph.D.,
Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences
216-76, California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125
Voice: 626-395-6826
FAX: 626-585-8743
E-mail:
php@caltech.edu
URL:
www.cco.caltech.edu/~phplab/phplab.html
ABSTRACT:
The general theme of Prof. Patterson's research involves the overlap and interaction between the nervous system and the immune system. The role of neuropoietic cytokines in injury and repair of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) and the Central Nervous System (CNS), which includes neurodegenerative diseases, learning and memory, pain, and inflammation are all being investigated by means of knock-out mice and viral-driven over-expression in vivo. Additional projects include developing a mouse model of mental illness, exploring novel treatments for Huntington's Disease, and the connection between behavioral stress and melanoma.
With regard to autism, some researchers suspect that maternal viral infections are one of the principal non-inherited causes of autism. Epidemiological studies have found a significantly increased risk of autism in the offspring of mothers exposed to the Rubella Virus (German Measles) early in pregnancy. The Patterson Lab reported [1] that when pregnant mice were infected with a modified human flu virus, they produced offspring that, as adults, behaved in ways similar to those of many autistic children. Compared with a control group, the affected mice interacted less and were unusually anxious under mildly stressful situations and around unfamiliar objects.
The CalTech researchers also found unusually low numbers of critical signaling components called Purkinje Cells in the brain tissue of affected mice. Autopsies of patients with autism have also revealed fewer than normal of these cells.
Patterson's group has reported that altered brain development in the mice doesn't appear to occur as a direct result of viral infection in the fetus [2]. Instead, there's evidence that it's related to a natural immune response in the mother, but the mechanism is something that is still being worked on. Some of the molecules that the mother uses to fight the virus may be crossing the placenta and affecting brain development in the fetus. If so, the problem wouldn't be specific to the flu virus. Many different types of infection could lead to the same result.
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Times:
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Once again, our government has demonstrated a deliberate status-quo strategy in defending its chronologically- challenged constituents. Contrary to the hopes of those who worked so hard to lobby for funding from the Congress to create this agency as a separate division of NIH, naively expecting that it would reveal a true path to the "cutting-edge therapies to come," this agency has become an instrument of oppressive zero-risk conservative geriatric internal medicine. Come and give us your opinion.
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