Postmortem Brains: What Can Proteomics Tell us About the Sources of Schizophrenia?

Modeling schizophrenia is challenging due to the uniquely human component of psychiatric disorders. Despite several advances in cellular and animal modeling, postmortem brain tissue derived from patients is still one of the extremely few sources of information that comprises brain complexity, human genetics, and patient experiences. Additionally, postmortem tissue from patients with schizophrenia can be used to drive hypotheses that can then be validated in other models, involving either other animals or an in vitro approach. While evaluating high-throughput and sensitive techniques, shotgun proteomics allows for the identification and quantitation of thousands of proteins present in biological systems. In the context of schizophrenia, proteomics can map differentially regulated proteins throughout brain regions of patients with schizophrenia, generating a large amount of information regarding the disorder's pathophysiology. In this chapter, our aim is to bring the literature up to date regarding proteomics tools applied to postmortem brains from patients with schizophrenia, additionally discussing new findings, roads, and perspectives for the comprehension of this severe disorder.