Vulnerability to develop stress-induced behavioral disorders may be set during fetal development, negatively affecting the manner in which individuals respond to stressful situations for the remainder of their lives. Currently, we have developed two strains of mice which display resilience or vulnerability to stress. Our research demonstrates that offspring born to stress-vulnerable mothers exposed to stress during their pregnancies respond to stressful situations in a more exaggerated, negative manner and display greater tendency to develop depressive symptoms, and our recent study focused upon the placental substrates mediating adaptation to prenatal stress found placental recruitment of the glucocorticoid receptor to present a target for the clinical evaluation of the impact of prenatal stress, which should contribute to the early diagnosis of stress-induced developmental disorders.
Principal Investigator: Prof. Albert Pinhasov
Behavioral and Molecular Psychiatry Lab
This research was published in a scientific journals (recent publications):
Mohamed Mari, Anastasia Bagaev, Debpali Sur, Beatriz G S Rocha, Dilorom Begmatova, Natalia Zemliana, Abdalla Bowirrat, Kenneth Blum, Panayotis K Thanos, Natalya M Kogan, Albert Pinhasov, Personality-based intergenerational effects of prenatal THC exposure in an inherited mouse model of social dominance and submissiveness, Scientific Reports, 2025 Aug 20;15(1):30624.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40835854/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37845494/
Becker M, Gorobets D, Shmerkin E, Weinstein-Fudim L, Pinhasov A, Ornoy A., Prenatal SAMe Treatment Changes via Epigenetic Mechanism/s USVs in Young Mice and Hippocampal Monoamines Turnover at Adulthood in a Mouse Model of Social Hierarchy and Depression, International Journal of Molecular Sciences.2023 Jun 27;24(13):10721.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37445911/
Becker M, Abaev K, Shmerkin E, Weinstein-Fudim L, Pinhasov A, Ornoy A. Prenatal SAMe Treatment Induces Changes in Brain Monoamines and in the Expression of Genes Related to Monoamine Metabolism in a Mouse Model of Social Hierarchy and Depression, Probably via an Epigenetic Mechanism. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2022 Oct 7;23(19):11898.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36233200/
Murlanova K, Begmatova D, Weber-Stadlbauer U, Meyer U, Pletnikov M, Pinhasov A., Double trouble: Prenatal immune activation in stress sensitive offspring, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2022 Jan 1;99:3-8.