| | Staff Scientists and Clinicians
| Barbara K. Lipska, Ph.D. |
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Dr.
Lipska graduated with M.Sci. degree in chemistry from
University of Warsaw in 1975 and a Ph.D. degree in europharmacology
from Medical Academy in Warsaw, Poland, in 1989. She joined
NIMH as a post-doctoral Fogarty fellow in 1989 and began
her independent research on animal modeling to reproduce
multiple aspects of schizophrenia. In 1997, she was promoted
to a Staff Scientist in the Clinical
Brain Disorders Branch of NIMH. Dr Lipska’s
contributions include serving on board of the Animal Care
and Use Committee of NIMH and Institutional Review Board
of NIAAA, as a grant reviewer for Canadian NIH, Czech
Government Mental Health Center and the US Department
of VA. She received National Alliance for Research on
Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) Young Investigator
Award (1994-1995) and Theodore and Vada Stanley Foundation
Research Award (1995-1996) and signed 3 CRADA agreements
with pharmaceutical companies. She is a patent holder
for "Rat or Mouse Exhibiting Behaviors Associated
with Human Schizophrenia" (No. 5,549,884 issued August
27, 1996 by the United States Patent & Trademark Office). |
| Research Interests |
Dr. Lipska’s major research theme has been studying the etiology and pathophysiology of schizophrenia at the level of animal and human brain biology by developing heuristic animal models that can be useful in development of new therapies, identifying candidate genes and providing new insights about the disease. Recently, she has concentrated her molecular biology skills on gene expression in humans. She studies the neurobiology of susceptibility genes for schizophrenia. To identify potential genetic mechanisms of the clinical associations, she has investigated the human brain tissue expression data based on genotype at the associated alleles across the human lifespan.
Through animal experimentation, she assesses the effects of crucial confounding factors in human postmortem studies. The results of these studies led to the discovery that risk alleles are associated with novel transcripts expressed preferentially in fetal human brain.
Dr. Lipska authored —100 papers. She is invited to report the results of her work at scientific meetings around the world. Dr. Lipska has taken the initiative in arranging collaborations with extramural experts in the fields of behavioral and molecular neuroscience. |
| Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
- Sartorius LH, Weinberger DR, Hyde TM, Harrison PJ, Kleinman JE, Lipska BK:
Alternative splicing of GRM3 in human brain is predicted by a schizophrenia risk-associated SNP. Neuropsychoparm., 33:2626-2634, 2008.
- Lipska BK, Mitkus S, Caruso M, Hyde TM, Chen J, Vakkalanka R, Straub RE, Weinberger DR, Kleinman JE:
RGS4 expression in post-mortem human cortex is associated with COMT Val158Met genotype and COMT enzyme activity. Hum Mol Gen., 15, 2804-2812, 2006.
- Lipska BK, Deep-Soboslay A, Shannon Weickert C, Hyde TM, Martin CE, Herman MM, Kleinman JM:
Critical factors in gene expression in postmortem human brain: focus on studies in schizophrenia. Biol Psychiatry, 60, 650-658, 2006.
- Lipska BK, Peters T, Halim N, Mitkus S, Shannon Weickert C, Matsumoto M, Sawa A, Hyde TM, Weinberger DR, Kleinman JE:
Expression of DISC1 binding partners is reduced in schizophrenia and associated with DISC1 SNPs. Hum Mol Gen., 15(8):1245-58, 2006.
- Lipska BK, Weinberger DR:
To model a psychiatric disorder in animals: Schizophrenia as a reality test. Neuropsychopharmacology, 23, 223-239, 2000.
- Lipska BK, Jaskiw GE, Weinberger DR:
Postpubertal emergence of hyperresponsiveness to stress and to amphetamine after neonatal hippocampal damage: A potential animal model of schizophrenia. Neuropsychopharmacology, 9, 67-75, 1993.
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