COSTA Lara Tania

Lara Costa has studied the effects of serotonin on synaptic transmission in the hippocampus (Costa et al., 2012b) using patch clamp, showing that activation of 5-HT7 receptors reverses hippocampal mGluR-LTD in wild-type mice and in a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome (Costa et al., 2012a). Now she is studying the use of new synthesis agonists for serotonin type 7 (5-HT7) receptors as a possible novel therapeutic strategy in Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) (Costa et al., Front. Behav. Neurosci.2015) and the intracellular pathways activated by 5-HT7 receptors; she is testing in vitro and in vivo effects of our new compounds on a mouse model of Fragile X Syndrome (Costa et al., 2018). In a new collaboration, she is studying the peripheral and spinal processing of pain in on CRND8 mice, the transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease. She is investigating the question of whether Aß normally controls pain transmission in the spinal dorsal horn (DH) and to assess a few number of relevant conditions (i.e, NE-ergic neuronal loss and estrogenic tone) that may intervene to alter this control. Lara Costa has also characterized the modulatory effects exerted by the endogenous neuropeptide PACAP on AMPA-receptor mediated synaptic currents in the hippocampus and identified the receptors and intracellular messengers involved (Costa et al., 2009). In a later study, she has characterized the pre-and post-synaptic effects mediated PAC1 receptors for PACAP and identified a component mediated by release of endogenous acetylcholine (Pecoraro et al., 2017). Lara Costa is investigating the consequences of the disrupted mGluR5/Homer crosstalk for the surface dynamics of mGluR5 and consequently for the function and plasticity of NMDA receptors. These studies demonstrate for the first time an alteration in the mGluR5 dynamics at synapses of Fmr1-/y neurons, and its implication in synaptic defects and behavioural phenotypes in Fmr1-/y mice (Catania et al., 2014; 2014; Aloisi et al., 2017). Moreover, Lara Costa is studying the role of phosphodiesterase PDE2 in synaptic plasticity in physiological conditions and in the animal model of FRAX (in collaboration with Dr. Barbara Bardoni, Maurin et al., 2018). Lara Costa has performed patch clamp recordings from rat hippocampal neurons to test the biological effects of new ligands with high affinity on either AMPA or NMDA receptors for glutamate (Gitto et al., 2008a, 2008b; Gitto et al., 2009; Gitto et al., 2011), with the final objective of finding new pharmacological tools in the therapy of neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, Lara Costa has studied the function of mGlu1 and mGlu5 receptors in neurospheres obtained from the subventricular zone of adult mice. This study has shown that mGlu1b and mGlu5 receptors exert complementary functions in the regulation of survival and proliferation of adult subventricular neural progenitor cells (NPCs), disclosing a novel aspect in the control of NPC biology by glutamate signaling and suggesting new strategies for the therapy of neurodegenerative disorders (Castiglione et al., 2008).