Highlights in mood disorders

David Slattery, PhD, is Professor for Translational Psychiatry at University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany. Since he commenced his PhD studies, his research has centred on the neurobiology of stress-related disorders; with particular emphasis on mood and anxiety disorders. Throughout the course of his studies in the UK, Switzerland and Germany, he has focussed on the development and utilization of state-of-the-art behavioural, pharmacological and molecular approaches to study the neuropathophysiology of these disorders and to assess novel drugs that could be used to treat them. He performed his BBSRC Case Award PhD at the University of Bristol and Organon Laboratories Ltd (supervised by Dr Alan Hudson and Prof. David Nutt) with the title "Characterisation of a novel antidepressant: Org 34167. During this time, amongst other studies, he demonstrated that the immediate-early genes c-fos and Egr-1 could be used for mapping the actions of psychotropics in the brain. Thereafter, in his first post-doctoral position at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland (supervised by Prof. John F. Cryan), the aim of his studies was the development of novel animal models for studying major depressive disorder. Towards that end, he setup and established an intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) paradigm, with which to study the reward circuitry in the brains of rodents. Having achieved this, he combined the ICSS paradigm with the olfactory bulbectomy model of depression, one of the few models that require chronic antidepressant administration to reverse the induced deficits. Thereafter, he moved to the University of Regensburg, Germany (supervised by Prof. Dr. Inga Neumann) where he studied the potential role of neuropeptides, especially oxytocin and neuropeptide S in the aetiology and potential treatment of mood and anxiety-disorders. Moreover, given the high prevalence of postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, a highly understudied research topic, he performed a series of studies in which to assess the impact stress during the peripartum period has on the dam. He has continued to work in these fields since his move to Frankfurt, as well as studying the molecular basis underlying impulsive and aggressive behaviour.