Mental Health: Cell Models to Mechanisms

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Background

Good mental health is essential for our well-being and the transition to illness is a major and growing global health and societal issue. Yet despite the magnitude and consequences of the problem, we know very little about the underlying biological causes of poor mental health. This lack of mechanistic knowledge is a significant barrier to the development of improved preventative and therapeutic strategies, including design of more effective drugs.

There is a strong genetic component to risk of developing a mental health associated condition and advances in neuropsychiatric genetics has opened the door to the identification of underlying disease mechanisms. Although very complex, our current understanding of patient risk genetics points to a series of overlapping biological mechanisms that converge on altered cell biology. The challenge now is to create cell-based models that progress our understanding of disease mechanism.

In this research topic, we focus on the use of cell-based studies to understand the biology of mental health and how we can convert knowledge of genetic and environmental risk into altered cell mechanisms of relevance to transition to illness. The particular focus is on modelling psychiatric and neurological conditions, spanning from early life to adulthood, including neurodevelopmental disorders (such as autism, intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia), mood disorders and epilepsy. Important aspects of cell modelling for mental health is the need for a clear indication of the biological hypothesis under investigation and how new knowledge can be translated into advanced understanding of the patient condition.

In this context, advances in stem cell technology and use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for direct access to patient biology are now coming to the forefront and promise great advances, albeit with experimental limitations. There are also still benefits to be gained from cell studies based on animal models where multicellular interactions and functional readouts can correlate strongly with altered cell properties. Further, it is important to build new cell-based knowledge into the next conceptual frameworks that advance our overall understanding of how molecular level changes play out for mental health.

In this topic, we invite original research (articles, short communications, opinions, and perspectives) that exemplify advances in cell-based knowledge for mental health, develop new and advanced cell models and place cell studies in the context of patient biology. Our focus is on mental health and brain disorders, excluding studies based solely on age-related neurodegenerative diseases, although we recognize that there may be biological overlap with mental health conditions of earlier lifespan. The scope includes, but is not limited to:

• Cell model studies, including 2D culture and organoids, that associate genetic or environmental risk to disease mechanisms

• Transcription profiling accompanied by target validation in cell models

• Development of cell-based genetic or drug screening platforms for mental health

• Computational and conceptual models utilizing newly generated cell data

Keywords: Neurodevelopmental disorders, Autism, Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, Neurodegenerative disorders, Neurocellular biology, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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