ChondroGene Limited reported today that a paper entitled "Assessing the Validity of Blood- Based Gene Expression Profiles for the Classification of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder: A preliminary Report" is available online on the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics' website.
The study examined the blood gene expression of 74 patients - 30 with schizophrenia, 16 with bipolar disorder and 28 controls. Eight gene blood biomarkers were identified and used to discriminate amongst the 3 groups, with an overall accuracy of 95% to 97%.
The paper was co-authored by Dr. Ming T. Tsuang, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, and Director, Institute of Behavioral Genomics, Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and Director, Harvard Institute of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Genetics, Harvard Department of Epidemiology and Psychiatry, Harvard University and Dr. C.C. Liew, ChondroGene's Chief Scientist, Visiting Professor and Founder of The Cardiovascular Genome Unit at The Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Professor Emeritus at The University of Toronto, and was responsible for conceiving the Sentinel Principle. The data presented in the paper is a result of an initial collaborative research project between ChondroGene and Dr. Tsuang in which the Sentinel Principle was applied to these two psychiatric disorders. Additional studies to further validate disease-specific biomarkers in larger psychiatric populations are ongoing.