Schizophrenia

What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a debilitating brain disorder that highly impairs normal brain function and the patients’ interaction with the environment. Schizophrenia often strikes during adolescence or early adulthood and can last for a lifetime as current treatments are only partially effective, and in some cases they have no therapeutic effect at all. Schizophrenia severely impacts on the lives of sufferers and their families, and imposes a considerable financial burden of over $1.5 billion yearly on the Australian community.

How many people develop Schizophrenia?
About one in one hundred people will develop schizophrenia.
30% of schizophrenia patients will attempt suicide, 5 percent die.

What are the symptoms?
Schizophrenia is associated with positive, negative and cognitive symptoms: 

• Positive symptoms (psychotic symptoms that most individuals do not normally experience) include delusions, foremost auditory hallucinations and confused thinking
• Negative symptoms (loss or absence of normal traits or abilities) include emotional flattening, social withdrawal, poverty of speech, anhedonia and lack of motivation.
• Cognitive symptoms include impairments in learning, memory and problem solving 

What causes Schizophrenia?
While we do not know what causes schizophrenia, evidence suggests that abnormalities in brain development contribute to the disorder. These are likely to be due to a combination of hereditable genetic and/or environmental factors.

Our research about Schizophrenia
At the CTN the schizophrenia research aims to investigate possible causal mechanisms of schizophrenia and to develop more effective antipsychotic drug treatments. In order to achieve these aims, there are 3 main focuses of our research: 

1. The use of animal models to investigate the role of specific genes and environmental factors on brain development, plasticity and behaviour;
2. The use of human post-mortem brain tissue to establish the neurochemical changes occurring in the schizophrenia brain;
3. Investigating the mechanisms of current antipsychotic drugs and testing the potential of novel antipsychotic treatments in our animal models.

Obesity
 

What is Obesity?
Obesity is a serious, chronic medical condition with an excessive body fat accumulation to the extent that causes an adverse affect on health. Obesity is a major health problem in developed countries including Australia.

How many people develop Obesity?
Obesity afflicted 3.24 million Australians in 2005 and this figure could double to 7.2 million (28.9% of population) by 2025 (Diabetes Australia, 2006).

What are the symptoms?
Obesity is strongly associated with a number of chronic diseases such as type II diabetes, certain cancers, breathing difficulties during sleep, high blood pressure and coronary atherosclerotic heart diseases

What causes Obesity?
Obesity is a result of a combination of excessive food intake, reduced physical activity, and genetic susceptibility.

There are also a limited number of cases due solely to genetics, other medical reasons (e.g. polycystic ovaries), or psychiatric illness.

Our research about Obesity
At the CTN the obesity research aims to investigate possible causal mechanisms of obesity and to develop more effective prevention and treatments. To achieve these aims, there are 2 main focuses of our research: 

1. Using diet-induced obesity mouse models to investigate the mechanisms of the development of obesity, particularly in the neuroendocrine regulation of food intake.
2. Searching for better strategies to prevent and treat obesity and its related metabolic disorders and implementing these strategies in both mouse models and in human trials.

Colon Cancer

What is colon cancer?
Colon (or colorectal) cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells in the colon, rectum and appendix. It is the third leading cause of cancer-related death. After it invades other organs, the 5 year survival rate is less than 10%. Thus, early detection is vital to allow surgical removal of the cancer.

How many people develop colon cancer in Australia?
Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in Australia. The occurrence rate of colon cancer is about 1/17 in males and 1/26 in females in Australia. 

What are the symptoms?
The symptoms of colon cancer are not specific and not diagnostic. The common symptoms include: 

• Local symptoms: abdominal discomfort, change in bowel habit, thin stool, dark or bright red blood in the stool.
• General status: anaemia, fatigue, pale skin, fever and weight loss.

What causes colon cancer?
Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to colon cancer development. People who have familial colon cancer usually develop the disease before the age of 40 if untreated. Risk factors for colon cancer include aging, smoking, unhealthy diet (high-fat, red meat, low fibre), physical inactivity, alcohol and obesity. It could take 10-15 years for the cancer development and this therefore provides a good opportunity to target its prevention.

Our research about colon cancer 
In the CTN, we are studying the link between obesity and colon cancer. Our main objectives are: 

1. Identification of risk factors in obesity in cell culture. These risk factors could include elevated blood levels of insulin, insulin-like growth factor, leptin, interleukin-6 and tumour necrosis factor-alpha, and decreased blood levels of adiponectin.
2. Demonstration of increased incidence of colon cancer in an animal model for obesity. We will examine if high fat diet-induced obese mice have a higher incidence of colon cancer when exposed to carcinogens.
3. Prevention of obesity-associated colon cancer. We will test if dietary fibre and supplementation of adiponectin could prevent obesity-associated colon cancer.