Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology
My laboratory is focused on molecular mechanisms of brain plasticity with a new angle on the communication between mitochondria and nuclei of a cell to allow epigenetic regulation and the expression of genes that are important for brain plasticity. We use preclinical models to identify the ways in which stress exposure changes brain mitochondrial metabolism and the corresponding epigenetic programming of plasticity, and we extensively validate and translate basic neuroscience discoveries through the study of well-characterized cohorts of patients with main mental illnesses, including depression and Alzheimer’s disease.
Key to this framework is the pivotal mitochondrial metabolite acetyl-L-carnitine (LAC), which my group discovered as an epigenetic modulator for the rapid regulation of brain plasticity and a therapeutic target for clinical phenotypes of depression, including treatment resistant depression. In recent years, my laboratory has also developed a new technology for the isolation of neuronal and astroglial exosomes which can be extracted from blood of a patient and their molecular cargo can be characterized using targeted and next-generation sequencing approaches to study molecular biomarkers and mechanisms of brain plasticity dynamically and prospectively. Using neuronal exosomes and computational approaches, we showed that mitochondrial metabolism of LAC is predictive of changes in other important aspects of human physiology, such as insulin resistance, and clinical outcomes, i.e.: treatment responses.
These discoveries have been contributing to rethink the way we study brain plasticity in multiple mental illnesses, and to refine the development of the most effective approaches for biomarkers of brain processes in pursuit of personalized therapeutic strategies.
1 Park Avenue
8th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine
PhD from Sapienza University of Rome
Rockefeller University, Bruce McEwen Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology
Nature neuroscience. 2015 Oct; 18(10):1353-63
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 2013 Mar 19; 110(12):4804-9
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 2018 08 21; 115(34):8627-8632
Neuron. 2017 Oct 11; 96(2):402-413.e5
Molecular psychiatry. 2021 Sep; 26(9):5140-5149
Biological psychiatry. 2019 09 15; 86(6):483-491
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 2016 07 12; 113(28):7906-11
Molecular psychiatry. 2017 02; 22(2):227-234