# Animal Models Core

> **NIH NIH P50** · ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI · 2021 · $471,012

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY – ANIMAL MODELS CORE
The Animal Models Core provides a broad range of the most sophisticated mouse models of depression and
acute behavioral assays to support the Center's goals to establish epigenetic mechanisms of depression and
other stress-related disorders. Such models include several chronic stress paradigms in adult mice as well as
paradigms of early life stress, with a focus on comparisons of stress responses in male and female animals
across the life cycle. The imperative to employ this broad behavioral battery is that it is difficult to infer
something about such a heterogeneous syndrome as depression, about which there is still limited etiologic and
pathophysiological information, from a single model or even a limited number of models. The Core then utilizes
these models in two main ways. First, the Core provides microdissections of limbic brain regions from carefully
defined mouse models for molecular characterization in all four Projects and in the Chromatin and Gene
Analysis Core. Second, the Core provides extensive behavioral characterization after manipulation of specific
genes of interest to Projects 1 through 4 and is, consequently, instrumental in providing causal, mechanistic
data on how specific forms of epigenetic regulation, and the specific target genes affected, influence
depression-related behaviors. The Core accomplishes this by analyzing a range of genetic mutant mice as well
as by utilizing intra-cerebral injection of viral vectors or of small molecule activators/inhibitors of target proteins.
Additionally, the Core is responsible for generating most of the viral vectors used by Project investigators. The
Core also collaborates with each of the Projects to employ neurophysiological recording techniques,
optogenetic tools, and fiber photometry with in vivo calcium imaging to understanding how stress-induced gene
regulation controls the functioning of the affected neurons and their circuits to cause behavioral abnormalities.
By consolidating this behavioral, viral vector, and functional work within a centralized Core, we ensure rigorous
control over the data and facilitate comparisons and contrasts of experimental results across the individual
Projects. This consolidation also makes financial sense, since we concentrate and maximize efficient use of
our complementary expertise.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10118221
- **Project number:** 5P50MH096890-10
- **Recipient organization:** ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI
- **Principal Investigator:** Venetia Zachariou
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $471,012
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2012-05-01 → 2022-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10118221

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10118221, Animal Models Core (5P50MH096890-10). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10118221. Licensed CC0.

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