Fri. Oct 11, 2019 8:40 AM - 10:20 AM Room 6 (401+402)

Organizer / Chair: Wen-Sung LAI (Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taiwan), Co-chair: Masanari ITOKAWA (Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Japan), Discussants: ‌Atsushi KAMIYA (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA), Ming-Che KUO (National Taiwan University Cancer Center, Taiwan)

Schizophrenia is a costly and devastating mental disorder that affects up to 1% of the population worldwide. This debilitating brain disorder typically emerges in late adolescence and early adulthood which characterized by three main symptoms: positive symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, thought disorder, motor problems, delusions, symptoms associated with psychosis etc.), negative symptoms (e.g., flat affect, social withdrawal, apathy, self-neglect, anxiety, lack of motivation, and decrease in IQ etc.), and cognitive deficits. Generally speaking, positive symptoms of schizophrenia often respond well to antipsychotic drugs. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia can often linger or worsen over time, accompanied by impaired cognitive function, such as working memory and executive function. Currently available antipsychotics have been mainly focused on positive and mood-related symptoms targeting the dopamine and serotonin receptor systems. The negative symptoms and cognitive impairments of schizophrenia, which cause a deteriorated quality of life in patients and their families, have become an unmet medical need for antipsychotic drug development. In addition to the conventional view of dopamine involvement in schizophrenia (i.e., dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia), other neurotransmitter systems (e.g., glutamatergic neurotransmission) and therapeutic targets have gradually gained more and more attentions in the investigation of pathophysiology and treatment of schizophrenia in the recent decades. In response to the urgent needs in schizophrenia, it is imperative to perform functional assays for drug screening and evaluation, especially in preclinical studies. Preclinical animal studies are highly valuable and indispensable to the understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of schizophrenia and the elucidation of the drug effects. In this symposium, 4 distinguished speakers from Japan, USA, and Taiwan were invited, including Dr. Kiyofumi Yamada at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Dr. Yijuang Chern at Academia Sinica, Dr. Takashi Kitamura at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Dr. Wen-Sung Lai at National Taiwan University. We will report recent intriguing data and discuss new pharmaceutical agents for unmet medical needs in schizophrenia from preclinical animal models to clinical studies. Our findings will shed light on developing new pharmaceutical agents for unmet medical needs in schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders.