Katherine Zartman waited excitedly in the lobby of the Gonda
(Golschmied) Neuroscience and Genetic Reserach Center building
early Friday morning. In a few minutes, she would meet a UCLA
researcher working on several psychiatric disorders, including
schizophrenia ““ a disease that critically affected her son
Peter nearly 15 years ago.
“This is a very special opportunity,” Zartman said
of the visit.
After battling schizophrenia for several years, Peter began to
improve after taking clozapine, an experimental drug to treat
schizophrenia in 1987. Peter’s family and doctors were so
excited by his recovery they did not realize he was slipping into
an anxiety attack that would culminate in his suicide.
On what would have been Peter’s 40th birthday, his family
and several of his neighbors and close friends pitched in to help
fund a $30,000 grant for schizophrenia research from the National
Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression. NARSAD is
the largest donor-supported funder of research into severe
psychiatric disorders.
Roel Ophoff, an assistant professor in human genetics at UCLA,
was the recipient of the grant.
The grant started off as a letter from Peter’s close
friend, Sascha Bensinger, asking other friends and family members
to donate money to fund schizophrenia research.
After spending a happy childhood with Peter, who his mother
describes as bright, well-adjusted and well-liked, Bensinger said
she didn’t know how to deal with Peter’s sickness and
felt she had to honor his memory in a positive way.
Because the grant was a brain-child of Bensinger, who lives in
Los Angeles, Katherine Zartman said she wanted to pick a researcher
that was nearby so she could continue to monitor and observe the
progress.
With three kids of his own, Ophoff said it is difficult for him
to imagine what Katherine Zartman went through.
“You look at real people, you see it has an effect on the
real world,” Ophoff said.
Schizophrenia affects more than two million adult Americans
““ including 35 percent of the homeless on the city streets
““ and costs the nation over $32.5 billion annually, according
to NARSAD.
Ophoff described his research to Katherine and Bensinger while
giving them a tour of his lab.
Researchers have already associated neurological characteristics
with a specific region on chromosome eight.
After investigating, Ophoff realized most people suffering from
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and Tourette’s Syndrome have
the same mutation ““ an inversion of a large chunk of the DNA
sequence ““ on this chromosome.
However, not everyone with this inversion will necessarily
develop a neurological condition due to the determining role played
by external factors and the environment.
Ophoff has hypothesized that similar chromosomal rearrangements
are common throughout the entire human genome, but have never been
explained or scrutinized.
Although a link between these rearrangements and the disorders
have yet to be established, Ophoff aims to increase knowledge on
the genetic causes of neurological disorders.
“I hope that this knowledge will lead to a better
understanding of how a disease can develop, and why some people are
more susceptible to some diseases than others,” Ophoff
said.
His research, which doesn’t focus explicitly on
schizophrenia, but on the fundamental genetic origins of several
neurological disorders, intrigued Katherine Zartman.
In a submission to NARSAD, Zartman wrote that funding research
is something her family and other families who had to deal with
mental illness can do. At the time, the Zartman family helped fund
the work of Janet Finley, a schizophrenia researcher at the
University of Pittsburgh.
“And I know Peter would like that!” she wrote.
“Her work and the work of others like her is the hope of
tomorrow for those now suffering with mental illness and those who
will experience these tragic illnesses in the future.”