NARSAD Grantees Make Surprising Discovery: Promoting Natural Resilience to Treat Depression
Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, including 2007 NARSAD Young Investigator Grantee, Ming-Hu Han, MD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have made a surprising discovery about resilience to stress-induced depression. Working with mice, the research team found that by boosting overactive neuronal activity during a simulation of social defeat stress, a self-stabilizing response was eventually triggered in the animals susceptible to depression that corrected out-of-balance electrical activity and reversed symptoms, such as social withdrawal, anxiety and listlessness. “Dr. Han and colleagues reveal a highly novel mechanism that controls an individual's susceptibility or resilience to chronic social stress,” said Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, Nash Family Professor and Chair of Neuroscience and Director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “The discoveries have important implications for the development of new treatments for depression and other stress-related disorders.”
-Dr. Ming-Hu Han, Assistant Professor, Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
-Dr. Eric Nestler, Nash Family Professor and Chair, Neuroscience, Director of the Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai