Institute of Biochemistry of the Romanian Academy

Independent Sector Organisation

Robi TacutuProf. Moshe Szyf

B3758

Around 40% of the EU population suffers from a mental disorder. Healthy development can be derailed by excessive or prolonged activation of stress response systems in the body and brain during fetal life. Such toxic stress exposure can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and mental health across the lifespan. Our ERA-NET consortium (Project EMBED) focuses on two cohorts (offspring of obese or stressed mothers), aiming to address specific questions on mental health risk factors. This might be then used in the clinic for disease prevention and health promotion during pregnancy.

Major depression constitutes an enormous medical, individual, societal and economical challenge (depression afflicts up to 10-15% of the population worldwide). Despite extensive investigations, the exact mechanisms responsible for depression have not been identified, and current therapeutics are based on serendipitous discoveries rather than on bench-to-bedside, targeted drug discovery. In addition, although clinically efficient antidepressant drugs do exist, they show high treatment-resistance rates, slow onset of action, side effects, and drug–drug interactions. Currently, there is a clear consensus that early adverse experiences can impinge upon stress/metabolic pathways to coordinate body responses, increasing adult individual susceptibility for mental disorders such as depression. By carrying out the EMBED project, the consortium aims to advance this field of research by studying in more depth the links between pre-natal stresses and post-natal epigenetic modification, and by doing so, potentially enable preventive measures in risk populations, new diagnostics and new therapeutic approaches - for example by nutritional strategies reducing neuroinflammatory mechanisms implemented in the offspring.

07/04/2021