Roberto Lab
Principal Investigator: Marisa Roberto
Institution: Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
This is a competitive U01 renewal application under the Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism- Neuroimmune (INIA-N) Consortium (Notice# RFA-AA-20-11/12/13). It is designed to integrate multidisciplinary research projects based on the genomic, cellular, and behavioral neuroadaptations related to excessive alcohol consumption. The overall premise is that excessive alcohol consumption produces changes and adaptations in immune-related pathways that promote and sustain drinking. Mounting evidence indicates that immune-related pathways, including cytokines, are critical to regulating neuronal functions in addiction-related brain regions that underly the excessive drinking and behavioral phenotype associated with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). Notably, transcriptomic, and functional results point to interleukin-6 (IL-6) signaling as a strong candidate to test our central hypothesis that cytokines are integral to the neuroadaptations occurring in GABAergic and glutamatergic synapses and play a critical role in excessive drinking and anxiety-like behaviors associated with ethanol dependence and withdrawal. Specifically, we hypothesize that chronic ethanol-induced activation of IL-…
Active NIH Awards
- 5U01AA013498-25: 9/10 Electrophysiology of Alcohol in Extended Amygdala (2026)
- 5R01AA029841-05: Synaptic Mechanisms underlying sex-differences in alcohol use disorder (2026)
- 5U01AA013498-24: 9/10 Electrophysiology of Alcohol in Extended Amygdala (2025)
- 5R01AA029841-04: Synaptic Mechanisms underlying sex-differences in alcohol use disorder (2025)
- 5R37AA017447-15: Gene-environment interaction: the brain CRF system in alcohol preferring msP rats (2025)
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