Description:

Towards personalized treatments for perinatal mood disorders

Depression during pregnancy and postpartum, perinatal depression, is common, affecting approximately 10-12% of pregnancies. Perinatal depression has devastating consequences for both the mother and the infant, such as preterm birth and abnormal neurological development. Yet,  we do not fully understand the pathobiology of perinatal depression, precluding us from developing novel strategies to prevent and treat this condition. The microorganisms that reside in our gastrointestinal system are essential for our mental health through what has been coined as the gut-brain axis. In this talk, I will present the results of our clinical study, MoMent, in which we use a whole-body dynamic systems approach to study perinatal depression. Our pregnant participants complete several mental health questionnaires, provide blood and fecal samples, and undergo electroencephalography multiple times during the perinatal period. Statistical, computational, and network analysis of temporal multi-omics (metagenomics and metabolomics) and neuroimaging data integrated with animal models (fecal microbiota transplants) reveal that the gut microbiota could be a novel avenue to treat and ideally prevent perinatal depression.

Dr. Beatriz Peñalver Bernabé is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago. Dr. Peñalver Bernabé obtained her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Murcia, Spain, and her master's degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. After working in the polymeric industry for several years, she decided to return to academia, and she obtained her doctoral degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University under the supervision of Drs. Linda Broadbelt and Lonnie Shea. Thanks to the instrumental funding from the T32 Biotechnology Training Program, she realized her passion for improving women's health. Dr. Peñalver Bernabé completed her postdoctoral training with Dr. Jack Gilbert at the University of Chicago, where she focused on understanding the role of host-microbial interactions in human health. Her team focuses on conditions that affect women's health during their reproductive lifespan, such as infertility, perinatal disorders and the menopause transition and employs a combination of advanced statistics, machine learning and network approaches to reveal the underpinnings of these regulate these conditions.