Sat. Oct 12, 2019 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM Room 16 (Heian)

Organizer / Chair: Takahiro KATO (Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan), Co-chair: Po-See CHEN (Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan), Discussants: ‌Masahiro OHGIDANI (Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan), Eiji SHIGETOMI (Department of Neuropharmacology, University of Yamanashi, Japan)

Glial cells including astrocytes and microglia have recently been highlighted in the field of neuropsychiatry. Human postmortem and PET studies have suggested that activation of glial cells contribute to developing psychopathology in a variety of psychiatric disorders such as delirium, epilepsy, schizophrenia, mood disorders and autism. However, deeper molecular mechanisms have not been well clarified. Tradittionaly, actions of psychotropic drugs had been believed to be limited to neurons and synapses, and glia-target drugs are warranted. On the other hand, underlying mechanisms of non-pharmacological treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have not been clarified, and we hypothesize that glial cells may strongly contribute to the action of these treatments. By the way, delirium has been suggested as a glia-oriented disease, and deeper understandings of delirium will clarify the roles of glia not only in delirium but also in many other psychiatric disorders.
In order to discuss/resolve the above highly-important topics in glia-psycho-pathology, four speakers will introduce the up-to-knowledge based on their own study from rodent in vitro and in vivo experiments to human epigenetic and blood molecular approaches.
Prof. Koizumi will introduce the novel pharmacological actions of antidepressants on glial cells using rodent models. Dr. Limoa will talk about the possible glia-modulating mechanisms of ECT based on a rat model. Dr. Shinozaki will introduce his novel translational research of delirium patients focusing on epigenetics of glia. Finally, Dr. Kato will introduce a novel translational research approach using human blood samples such as metabolomic analysis and also a human blood induced microglia-like (iMG) cells to clarify the dynamic interaction between molecular actions and severity of psychiatric symptoms.
We believe that our symposium will shed new light on the future development of glia-target therapy in psychiatry.