The majority of people, including myself would never believe there existed a link between cancer and schizophrenia. With respect to cancer, we have uncontrolled cell growth and impairment of bodily functions. A disease that appears quite physical in nature. Schizophrenia on the other hand is one of the oldest and well documented mental disorders that exists in our society, and it crosses all borders and cultures. The physical manifestations of schizophrenia seem to be an extension of the broken mind. However, in my neurochemistry class this week we discussed an overlap between these two diseases that appear to be polar opposites. For those of you who aren’t well rehearsed in biochemistry, I’ll pretend to know what I’m talking about and explain it to you. Essentially the accumulation of a protein called beta catenin within brain cells results in cell growth. This is a necessary process for brain cells to properly operate. If this process goes unchecked though, we get cancer (which is bad). Our bodies are aware of this, and in some cases they can get over zealous. A protein that counters the beta catenin pathway is called GSK3. Basically GSK3 tags the beta catenin floating around for destruction. This is great because if beta catenin was always signaling the cell to grow we would all get brain cancer. But, the opposite side of the coin is that if GSK3 never allows beta catenin to signal, our cells are rigid and unable to move. Neuroscientist are hypothesizing that the suppression of beta catenin signaling is playing a roll in schizophrenia. This is exciting news, but we must remember that schizophrenia has a large number of causes ranging from genetic issues to infections, and we will not be able to understand it by mapping out a single pathway.
What we should take away from this is that two seemingly opposite diseases can be related in some ways. The unchecked over signaling of one pathway can result in a vastly different disease when compared to its suppression.
