BMI Seminar // Katharina Gapp: A novel tool to combat stress (-hormone receptor) signatures

I will discuss the environmental impact on stress hormone signaling and potential consequences on brain gene expression in priming neuropsychiatric disease risk. In particular, we will consider chronic and acute stress models in mice, their hormonal, gene, and behavior dysregulation and thus explore glucocorticoid signaling as a target for treatment. To this end, I will introduce our custom-developed Proteolysis targeting chimera tool that depletes the glucocorticoid receptor, one of the main stress hormone receptors, with unprecedented specificity at the protein level. I will demonstrate its applicability to difficult-to-target systems, such as primary neuronal cells, to elucidate impacts on neuronal activity, its translatability across species, and its effectiveness in vivo.
In the second part of my talk, we will turn toward the long-lasting – generation-spanning - impact of stress on behavior and metabolism and delineate glucocorticoid signaling in the germline among other mechanisms as a potential mediator of intergenerational transmission.