The CIPROM/2021/080 project will investigate the response in adolescents to social factors that cause stress, which can later lead to depression and addictions. Led by Marta Rodríguez and José Miñarro, researchers at the Department of Psychobiology of the Universitat de València (UV), the study highlights the role given to the knowledge of the consequences of depression in women, a pathology that has more serious effects in women and that very few neuroscience studies deal with.

The project is funded with 497,188 euros by the “Prometeo” programme for research excellence of the Valencian Government. 
The research aims to better understand the response to stress during adolescence, a critical period that marks mental health in adults, and thus offers better tools to regulate it and prevent it from leading to other problems such as depression and drug addiction, in which stress appears as one of the main causes.

“One of the strengths of this study is the research in animals of both sexes, as there are still very few studies in the field of neuroscience that analyse the responses of female animals. This type of study will be able to characterise the neuroinflammatory response as a mediator of the development of mental illness”, said José Miñarro. 

The project, which will run until 2025, will develop a series of preclinical studies to assess the response of adolescent animals to social stress. This will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms that can be used to enhance a resilient response to stress, which will be studied in a second part of the project (Rodríguez-Arias et al., 2017; Reguilon et al., 2022).

Also participating in this study are Carmen Arenas, Carmen Manzanedo and Sandra Montagud, lecturers of the Department of Psychobiology at the UV. María Isabel Colado (Complutense University of Madrid), Fernando Rodríguez de Fonseca (Biomedical Research Institute of Málaga) and Antonio Verdejo-García (Monash University, Melbourne Australia) are also collaborating.  

The “Prometeo” project grants aids to R&D&I groups of excellence in the Valencian Community and aims to promote their international projection and knowledge transfer. The projects are run by teams led by one or two main scientists, last up to four years and have a maximum amount of 150,000 euros per year. 

• Rodríguez-Arias M, Montagud-Romero S, Rubio-Araiz A, Aguilar MA, Martín-García E, Cabrera R, Maldonado R, Porcu F, Colado MI, Miñarro J. Effects of repeated social defeat on adolescent mice on cocaine-induced CPP and self-administration in adulthood: integrity of the blood-brain barrier. Addict Biol. 2017 Jan;22(1):129-141. doi: 10.1111/adb.12301. 
• Reguilón MD, Ballestín R, Miñarro J, Rodríguez-Arias M. Resilience to social defeat stress in adolescent male mice. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2022 Dec 20;119:110591. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2022.110591.