Seminar: "Intestinal Epithelial Oxytocin as a Novel Link Between the Gut and Brain" - Sara Di Rienzi, Ph.D.
Nutritional Sciences Seminar
Sara Di Rienzi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor Dept. of Neuroscience and Cell Biology Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers
How psychiatric and neurological conditions are linked to diseases of the gastrointestinal system is an emerging area of research, with recent discoveries of gut-brain connections relevant to the development of depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, and Parkinson’s disease. The hormone oxytocin is a potential candidate linking brain and gut functions: it is well understood to regulate normal social, stress, and anxiety responses, while in the gut, it mitigates inflammation and epithelial damage. Although oxytocin is predominantly produced and studied in the hypothalamus, it is also produced in numerous peripheral organs, though peripheral oxytocin is virtually unstudied. We recently reported that oxytocin is produced in the intestinal epithelium and is responsive to intestinal microbes. Our ongoing investigations are characterizing the gut-brain functions of this intestinal epithelial oxytocin.