Müller group

Translational psychiatry

Group Leader

Address of the laboratory:

Sektion Translationale Psychiatrie
Focus Translationale Neurowissenschaften (FTN)
Hanns-Dieter-Hüsch Weg 19
55128 Mainz

Group members

• Dr. med. J. Engelmann
• Dr. med. David Herzog, PhD  daherzog@uni-mainz.de
• Jennifer Klüpfel, M.A.
• Marija Milic PhD
• Alexander Stern (PhD student)
• Giulia Treccani, PhD

Interested in working in our laboratory? You will find further Information here.

The goal of the working group Translational Psychiatry is to contribute to the development of improved, ideally causal treatment options for patients with mental disorders by translating clinically relevant questions into corresponding animal experimental models of basic research in the long term.

In an interdisciplinary team of physicians and natural scientists, we investigate the complex interaction between the development of depressive disorders, the influence of stress as a known risk factor for the development of mental illness and the molecular mechanisms of effective antidepressive treatment. In addition, we deal with the neurobiological basis of individual stress sensitivity, and here in particular with the resistance (resilience) to stress (why does one person develop a mental illness in a temporal context with a high level of stress, while the other does not?). In addition, we are investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the interindividual differences in the response to antidepressive therapy (why does one patient respond to a certain antidepressive substance and become healthy, while another with comparable disease symptoms does not? Which predictors can predict a response to treatment?).

Research focus

• Neurobiological mechanisms of individual response to antidepressive therapy

• Stress research - interindividual differences in resistance (resilience) to stressful events

Cooperations

National

• Amparo Acker-Palmer, Goethe University Frankfurt
• Elisabeth Binder, Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, Munich
• Theo Rein, Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, Munich
• Marco Rust, Institute of Physiological Chemistry, Philipps-Universität Marburg
• Chris Turck, Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, München

International

• Claude Brodski, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev - Faculty of Health Sciences , Beer Sheva, Israel
• Donald B. DeFranco, PhD, Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
• Casper Hoogenraad, Molecular Neuroscience, University of Utrecht
• Dick F. Swaab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam

Funding

Collaborative Research Center 1193 ("Neurobiology of Resilience to stress-related mental dysfunction: from understanding mechanisms to promoting prevention"): Head of two subprojects:

• A03 (together with A. Acker-Palmer, Goethe-University Frankfurt): Neuronal actin dynamics shaping resilience: the role of the novel actin-interacting protein ‘downregulated in renal cancer’ (DDR1)

• Z02 (together with Beat Lutz, University Mainz): Modelling individual differences in response to stress in mice: an approach to identify neuro-biological mechanisms underlying resilience