The Research of Dr. Akira Sawa

Music Festival "Rising Star" scientist Akira Sawa M.D., Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine:

Dr. Akira Sawa

New insights on the activity of the DISC1 risk gene

When someone develops schizophrenia, the disease travels down a multi-step pathway, starting with faulty genes and ending with the symptoms the person actually experiences. If we can someday understand some of these pathways end to end, we may know not only what causes schizophrenia but also, hopefully, how to nip it in the bud. Since receiving his “Rising Star” grant from the Music Festival for Mental Health last year, Dr. Akira Sawa of Johns Hopkins has investigated a significant way down one such path, that leading from a prospective risk gene, DISC1, to the neurochemical flaws that cause the symptoms we can observe. Working with RNAi-modified mice over the course of their growth to test what happens when DISC1 is disrupted, he has found an interesting discovery: This disruption causes mesocortical dopaminergic projection to malfunction, and the mesolimbic dopamine system to bind too readily to this incoming neurotransmitter. Since dopamine-blocking medications are known to be effective in treating schizophrenia, this connection indicates DISC1 as a quite definite target for future genetic therapies for schizophrenia.

Also, working with Dr. Eva Anton of the University of North Carolina, the “Rising Star” winner from 2006, Dr. Sawa has found that another gene, neuregulin-1, appears to lie yet another step back on that same pathway. Dr. Sawa has noticed that in addition to the damage neuregulin-1 disruption directly causes in the developing brain, it also seems to cause DISC1 to malfunction, and has found tentative evidence for feedback from DISC1 disruption to neuregulin-1 malfunction. In so doing, they have begun to uncover one of the “twisty” bits of schizophrenia development pathways, those where two genes influence each other for a compounded schizophrenia risk. Drs. Sawa and Anton intend to continue investigating these gene interactions in the coming year.

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The "Rising Star" award

Since 2005, the Music Festival for Mental Health has been stimulating breakthrough research by supporting scientists early in their careers. The "Rising Star" Awards are $250,000 grants to help outstanding young scientists expand their research. In addition to the schizophrenia research award we have given annually for four years, this year we are offering four new awards for work in the development of means to provide individualized therapies for patients, and for pioneering research into the genetics of mental illnesses.

Dr. Sawa joins Dr. Schahram Akbarian of University of Massachusetts, Dr. Eva Anton of the University of North Carolina and Dr. Linda Brzustowicz of Rutgers University as scientists who have received this grant from the Music Festival--and who are continuing groundbreaking research today.

How you can support this research

Many festival-sponsored scientists will be present at next year's Music Festival for Mental Health on September 12, 2009. For a chance to meet them in person, please buy tickets to attend. Or, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the cause. To learn more, please see the page on our mission, or email or call us at (707) 944-0477 if you have any questions. Thank you!

Shari, Garen, Brandon and Shannon Staglin

About next year's event