As all scientists know, collaboration is often key in furthering scientific research.
No one knows this better than Annemarie Shibata, PhD, a professor of biology and director of the undergraduate neuroscience program at Creighton University.
Dr. Shibata joined forces with Peter Steyger, PhD, a COBRE funded investigator at Creighton and through it received a $160,686 National Institute of General Medical Sciences supplemental grant to further her research on the cellular interactions between the nervous system and the immune system during development.
Dr. Shibata is particularly interested in how cholesterol synthesis influences known networks in the brain and the impact the disruption of this process has on the development of different neurological pathways that can lead to hearing loss or psychosis.
As part of their research, Dr. Shibata and Dr. Steyger are working with Karoly Mirnics, MD, PhD, director of The Munroe-Meyers Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who is studying neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders using mouse models. Others in Dr. Mirnics lab who also are working on the project include Zelijka Korade, DVM, PhD, and Thiago Genaro-Mattos, PhD.
The group has targeted certain psychotropic drugs, used to treat anxiety and depression, that are often prescribed to pregnant women.
They are looking at how these medications potentially disrupt cholesterol synthesis and influence brain development in utero and may contribute to psychosis and hearing loss.
Dr. Shibata uses zebrafish in her research, which she said is an excellent model system for studying vertebrate development because zebrafish genes encode proteins that are very similar to humans and because the fish develop ex utero making it is easy to track embryo and neural development following drug delivery.
Dr. Shibata credits INBRE for helping to fund the original research that led to this collaborative project.
"The original project that the supplemental award branched off from was initial INBRE DRPP funding," she said.
And in her lab, the project is student driven with students actively taking part in the delivery of the drug to the fish and tracking behavior, assessing neural network function, and measuring morphological change.
The three main students on the project are an INBRE Scholar Nathan Zimmerman, a graduate student Carly Baker, and a senior undergraduate student Aaron Marta.
"It’s great to be able to share this research with such talented students," Dr. Shibata said.