Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-29

New molecules in mood disorders: a genomic, neurobiological and systems approach in animal models and human disorder

Objective

Depression is common and affects twice as many women as men. In the global burden of disease survey, it is the fourth most prevalent cause of disability, greater than eg cardiovascular disease. Gender, social and familial factors increase risk for depression, but little is known about how these influences work in the brain, least of all at the molecular level. Newer antidepressant treatments still act in the same way as 30 years ago and their downstream molecular actions are obscure. At most 65% of new episodes respond to drug-treatment and chronic, treatment-resistant depression is a major health burden.
This is a major collaboration between 13 clinical and basic science groups in 10 EU countries which
addresses the evident need to discover:
New molecular mechanisms in the causation of depression.
New molecular mechanisms of effective drug-treatment.
We will measure three fundamental processes underlying depression - the inability to experience pleasure, excessive sensitivity to stress and negative appraisal of circumstances. This will enable us to cross-validate findings, in humans and animal models. In animals we will use a mixture of well-established and novel methods for inducing genetic and mild stress-related changes in the three processes. We will detect the molecular mechanisms involved by creating the NEWMOOD microarray chip and measuring changes in gene expression. Changes which are consistent across many models will become targets for new treatments. In addition we will search for neurochemical changes in how monoamine and other neurones are regulated which are shared by the models. These too will become new molecular targets.
Humans with varying genetic and environmental risk factors will be compared on the three behaviours and on the brain systems and neurotransmitters responsible using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

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. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2002-LIFESCIHEALTH
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

IP - Integrated Project

Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
EU contribution
No data
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (13)

My booklet 0 0