A University of Iowa researcher has won a grant to study whether differences in molecules in the blood could be associated with suicide risk.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in young adults ages 15 to 34 in the United States, equating to one suicide death every 11 minutes. 

Marie Gaine, assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy, will analyze the blood of individuals with bipolar disorder, who have a risk of suicide eight times higher than the general population.

Gaine says that most understanding of the neurobiology behind suicide comes from postmortem tissue analyses; her approach could give scientists a picture of changes in the brain in living individuals with a history of suicide attempts. 

Gaine’s research will focus on two molecules within the blood. 

The first are extracellular vesicles, biological packages that carry genetic messages such as RNA, which translate instructions from the DNA into proteins. Gaine aims to uncover whether RNA that originates in the brain in those who have attempted suicide differs compared with those who haven’t. 

The second molecule is cell-free DNA (cfDNA), small fragments of DNA that float in the blood. Cell-free DNA contains both genetic and epigenetic information and chemical tags. These tags will allow Gaine to trace the cfDNA back to specific cell types, revealing brain regions that may be altered in suicide.

“These blood-based biomarkers, which may echo brain health, could help us understand brain-relevant changes that increase the risk for suicide,” Gaine says. 

This will be the first study to combine these two blood-based molecules to examine suicide risk, according to Gaine.

She hopes her research leads to better preventive treatment for high-risk people and a deeper understanding of the biology behind suicide. 

“There is still a harmful perception in society that wrongly thinks of suicide as ‘an act of weakness’ or ‘a selfish choice,’” Gaine says. “We hope this work will reduce this stigma by providing evidence that suicide has a biological basis rooted in measurable molecular changes in the brain.”

The two-year grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is for $450,000. It will be split between the University of Iowa and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.