Volume 20 Issue 6, June 2015

A family based paradigm reveals neurogenesis deficits in human iPSC derived neural progenitors derived from bipolar disorder patients. IPSC derived neural progenitor cells (NPC) from a family consisting of an unaffected mother and father (open shapes and top images) and their two bipolar sons (grey shapes, bottom images) were labeled with BrdU to measure DNA synthesis. The bipolar disorder NPCs show a decrease in BrdU labeling suggesting reduced proliferation compared to their parental controls. Gene expression analysis and treatment with a GSK3 inhibitor implicates changes in WNT pathway signaling in these neurogenesis deficits. For more info on this topic, please refer to the article by Madison et al on pages 703–717.