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Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

The Schizophrenia Center

The Atsushi Kamiya Lab

 

Atsushi Kamiya, M.D., Ph.D. 

Research Overview

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.

Selected Publications

  • Golzio, C., Willer, J., Talkowski, M.E., Oh, E.C., Taniguchi, Y., Jacquemont, S., Reymond, A., Sun, M., Sawa, A., Gusella, J.F., Kamiya, A., Beckmann, J.S., Katsanis, N.: KCTD13 is a major driver of mirrored neuroanatomical phenotypes of the 16p11.2 copy number variant. Nature (2012)
  • 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 GABAAreceptor modulation reverses deficits in neuronal maturation in a conditional neurodevelopmental mouse model of DISC1. Molecular Psychiatry (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. Biological 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 C.J., Saito, A., Hasegawa, Y., Tanaka, Y., Nagpal, M., Perez, G., Always, 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/Arl14ep risk gene. Nature Communications (2019)
  • Zhu X, Sakamoto S, Ishii C, Smith MD, Ito K, Obayashi M, Unger L, Hasegawa Y, Kurokawa S, Kishimoto T, Li H, Hatano S, Wang TH, Yoshikai Y, Kano S, Fukuda S, Sanada K, Calabresi PA, Kamiya A.: Dectin-1 signaling on colonic γδ T cells promotes psychosocial stress responses. Nature Immunology (2023)
  • Hasegawa Y, Kim J, Ursini G, Jouroukhin Y, Zhu X, Miyahara Y, Xiong F, Madireddy S, Obayashi M, Lutz B, Sawa A, Brown SP, Pletnikov MV, and Kamiya A.: Microglial cannabinoid receptor type 1 mediates social memory deficits in mice produced by adolescent THC exposure and 16p11.2 duplication. Nature Communications (2023)