From epigenetics to stratified therapies in neuropsychiatric diseases

The establishment of effective therapies for neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases is still challenging and one of the reasons is that especially for age-associated neurodegenerative diseases pathology accumulates long before there are any clinical signs of disease. Thus, patients are often only diagnosed at an already advanced state of molecular pathology, when causative therapies fail. Thus, there is an urgent need for molecular biomarkers that could detect individuals at risk for developing a CNS disease and stratify patients. I will address epigenetic processes such as histone-modifications and non-coding RNAs as potential approaches for patient stratification and therapeutic interaction, with a specific focus on RNA-therapies. Here, I plan to cover examples from our recent research on Alzheimer’s disease and Schizophrenia.