Yasmin L. Hurd
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Drug use can leave lasting marks on the brain by changing which genes are switched on. Two pressing cases are cannabis, now widely legal and often used during pregnancy, and opioids, which drive the deadliest overdose crisis in US history.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Genetics
- Topics
opioid use disorder
heroin
fentanyl
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through May 2029
What they work on
- Determine how prenatal cannabis or THC exposure disturbs immune-related genes in the placenta and brain, using placentas from women who used cannabis during pregnancy and rats exposed to THC during development.
- Map molecular networks within distinct reward-circuit cell populations altered by developmental THC exposure using single-cell methods, and identify early changes that predict and causally drive adult behavior.
- Define FYN-related gene networks, centered on the synaptic enzyme FYN that phosphorylates tau, in reward brain regions using cell-type-specific RNA sequencing of human heroin users' brains and rats self-administering heroin.
- Test how Fyn changes intracellular signaling, tau phosphorylation and cytoskeletal organization to drive heroin taking and seeking, using viral tools that alter Fyn in specific cell types in rats.
- Profile gene activity and open DNA in single cells of the human and rat dorsal striatum and nucleus accumbens after heroin or fentanyl use, using snRNAseq and snATACseq across drug intake and relapse.
- Test the causal role of PRC2, a gene-silencing protein complex, in opioid-induced behavior, gene expression and dendrite shape of D1 and D2 striatal neurons using viral and genetic mouse tools.
More about the research
Current addiction medicines are mostly opioids themselves and carry a risk of misuse. Across three projects, the lab studies the molecular changes behind these effects in the mesocorticolimbic system, the brain's reward and motivation circuitry. It pairs human tissue, including post-mortem brains from people who used heroin and placentas from pregnancies with cannabis use, with rat and mouse models to find mechanisms that could become treatment targets.
Why it matters
Opioid addiction needs treatments that are not themselves opioids. This work could point to new drug targets, such as the enzyme FYN and the gene-silencing complex PRC2, for which inhibitors already exist in cancer treatment. It could also reveal how cannabis use during pregnancy raises children's risk of later psychiatric disorders, informing guidance for pregnant women and teens.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Eric J. Nestler
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Identify stable "chromatin scars" left in the mouse nucleus accumbens by early life stress, using unbiased proteomic and next-generation sequencing screens in specific neuron types and keeping only marks also found in postmortem accumbens from depressed humans.
Mary Kay Lobo
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Neuroscience
Map cellular, synaptic plasticity and molecular changes in defined cell subtypes of the medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens in mice exposed to fentanyl during the equivalent of human gestation, from weaning through adolescence.
Heath Schmidt
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Define how amylin receptors on specific cell types, dopamine and GABA neurons of the ventral tegmental area and D1- or D2-receptor medium spiny neurons of the nucleus accumbens, control oxycodone self-administration and relapse-like seeking, using viral gene delivery in transgenic rats.
The school
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: 45 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 62 research doctorates a year.
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