Ayanabha Chakraborti, Ph.D. — a senior research scientist in the laboratory of the UAB Department of Surgery’s Vice Chair of Basic Science Research James Bibb, Ph.D. — was recently awarded a $7,500 Yale/National Institute of Drug Addiction Neuroproteomics Center Pilot Research Project Grant for his research project, “Profiling the Nucleus Accumbens Proteome in an Experimental Model of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.”

Dr. Ayanabha Chakraborti

Chakraborti has extensive expertise in animal behavior and the molecular mechanisms that control mood, anxiety, depression and cognition. His research focuses on the interactions between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain.

In particular, Chakraborti is interested in the causes of bowel inflammation and mental depression comorbidity. Inflamed bowel disease patients are six times more likely to have anxiety or a major depressive disorder. In collaboration with colleagues, including the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery’s Greg Kennedy, M.D., Ph.D., and others, Chakraborti has established an animal model of IBD that has allowed him to study how it affects brain function with regard to behavior, brain circuitry and molecular mechanisms.

This award from the Yale/NIDA Neuroproteomics Center, of which Bibb is a member, will support a collaboration with Yale scientists in which phospho-proteomic analysis is used to understand how GI inflammation alters neuronal signal transduction mechanisms that cause anxiety, depression or alteration in reward and addiction related circuitry. These mechanisms may serve as the targets for the development of therapeutic drugs to treat GI-neuropsychiatric disorders. This work is also part of an initiative in surgery to understand intersystemic biology by which the GI system may affect neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.