Genetic and environmental risk factors for psychiatric disorders, brain development, stress, inflammation
Shiga University Hospital, Toyosato Hospital, Toyosato, Japan, 2000, Residency; Shiga University of Medical Science, Shiga, Japan, 2002, Staff Psychiatrist; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, 2007, Psychiatry
The goal of our research is to understand the molecular and circuit mechanisms underlying etiopathophysiologies of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and depression. In particular, we investigate how genetic risk factors and environmental factors, such as adolescent cannabis use and psychosocial stress, affect stress-related biological signaling mechanisms, including immune and inflammatory processes, leading to impairment of brain development and brain function that regulates cognitive and mood-related behaviors.
We hope our research ultimately identifies new therapeutic targets and biological markers for early intervention of these devastating conditions
Lab Website: The Atsushi Kamiya Lab
Kamiya, A., Kubo, K., Tomoda, T., Takaki, M., Youn, R., Ozeki, Y., Sawamura, N., Park, U., Kudo, O., Okawa, M., Ross, C.A., Hatten, M.E., Nakajima, K., Sawa, A.: A schizophrenia-associated mutation of DISC1 perturbs cerebral cortex development. Nature Cell Biol., 7; 1167-1178 (2005) (highlighted as "10 major breakthroughs in 2005 in Science 310: 1880-1885 2005")
Saito, A., Taniguchi, Y., Rannals, M., Merfeld, EB., Ballinger, MD., Koga, M., Ohtani, Y., Gurley, DA., Sedlak, TW., Cross, A., Moss, SJ., Brandon, NJ., Maher, BJ., Kamiya, A.: Early postnatal GABAA receptor modulation reverses deficits in neuronal maturation in a conditional neurodevelopmental mouse model of DISC1. Molecular Psychiatry 10; 1449-1459 (2016).
Jouroukhin, Y., Zhu, X., Shevelkin, AV., Hasegawa, Y., Abazyan, B., Saito, A., Pevsner, J., Kamiya, A., Pletnikov, MV.: Adolescent Δ9-THC exposure and astrocyte-specific genetic vulnerability converge on NF-κB-COX-2 signaling to impair memory in adulthood. Biol Psychiatry (2019).
Zhu, X., Nedelcovych, M., Thomas, A.G., Hasegawa, Y., Moreno-Megui, A., Commer, W., Vohra, V., Saito, A., Perez, G., Wu, Y., Alt, J., Prchalova, E., Tenora, L., Majer, P., Rais, R., Rojas, C., Slusher, B.S., Kamiya, A.: JHU-083 Selectively Blocks Glutaminase Activity in Brain CD11b+ cells and Prevents Depression-associated Behaviors Induced by Chronic Social Defeat Stress. Neuropsychopharmacology (2019).
Peter, CJ., Saito, A., Hasegawa, Y., Tanaka, Y., Nagpal, M., Perez, G., Alway, E., Espeso-Gil, S., Fayyad, T., Ratner, C., Dincer, A., Gupta, A., Devi, L., Pappas, JG., Lalonde FM., Butman, JA., Han, JC., Akbarian, S., Kamiya, A.: In vivo epigenetic editing of Sema6a promoter reverses transcallosal dysconnectivity caused by C11orf46/Arl4ep risk gene, Nature Commun. (2019)