Project description
A new approach to neuropsychiatric disorders
Neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, affecting approximately 1 billion individuals globally, present a significant public health challenge. These disorders manifest through diverse cognitive and social impairments, profoundly impacting daily life and long-term outcomes. Despite the widespread prevalence, effective pharmacological interventions remain elusive. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the PRESERT project targets the serotonin transporter (SERT) as a potential therapeutic avenue for mitigating social dysfunctions in neuropsychiatric disorders. Specifically, the project aims to understand SERT’s impact, its neural circuits, and whether modulating its function can enhance social cognition. By bridging molecular understanding with brain circuitry, PRESERT lays the foundation for innovative neuropsychiatric treatments.
Objective
Neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are a heterogeneous group of mental diseases affecting about 1 billion people worldwide. Common alterations are in the cognitive and social domains, having a critical impact on the public health, daily life, and long-term outcomes of affected patients. Unfortunately, efficient pharmacological interventions are still missing. The serotonin transporter (SERT) re-uptakes serotonin after synaptic release and is an important clinical target. SERT is widely expressed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area profoundly engaged in socio-cognitive functions, and can be targeted by inhibitors -drugs acting by blocking the transporter- or by releasers- drugs acting as a substrate of SERT and then reversing its transport direction. The SERT releaser MDMA showed promising results for treating social dysfunctions in post-traumatic stress disorder and autism spectrum disorders and its pro-social effect seems dependent on SERT-reverse transport. Considering the efficacy of the SERT-releaser MDMA in modulating social dysfunctions, together with the need of SERT-reverse functions in mediating MDMA pro-social effects, and the role of the PFC in the regulation of socio-cognitive functions, the aim of PRESERT is to evaluate the impact of SERT on social cognition in mice. To achieve this overarching goal, PRESERT is divided into three specific objectives: i) investigating the impact of the PFC-expressed SERT on social cognition, ii) identifying the origin and connectivity of the underlying SERT-expressing circuits, and iii) evaluating if social cognition can be differentially modulated by the reverse transport (i.e. “efflux”) or the simple inhibition of SERT. As a direct consequence, PRESERT has the potential to link SERT, its molecular functions, and the underlying brain circuits to specific aspects of social cognition setting the ground for the development of innovative treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesneurobiology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic health
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinepsychiatryposttraumatic stress disorder
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
16163 Genova
Italy