The Hindu featured our recently published first-author research in Neuropsychopharmacology on the development of a novel female Chronic Social Defeat Stress (femCSDS) model for studying depression and stress-related neurobiology in females.

The study addressed a long-standing limitation in preclinical neuroscience, where most depression models have historically relied on male subjects despite the significantly higher prevalence of depression in women. Through this work, we established an ethologically relevant and biologically robust female-specific social defeat stress paradigm by utilizing persistently aggressive parous CD1 female mice. The model successfully reproduced core depression-associated behavioral phenotypes including social withdrawal, anxiety-like behavior, anhedonia, and behavioral despair, while also identifying glutamatergic and synaptic alterations in reward-associated brain regions.

Importantly, the work provides one of the first directly comparable female-specific adaptations of the classical Chronic Social Defeat Stress model, creating new opportunities for investigating sex differences in stress susceptibility, resilience, and antidepressant responses. The research also lays a translational foundation for future studies exploring female-specific molecular pathways underlying mood disorders and emotional stress.

The media coverage highlighted the broader scientific and societal importance of inclusive neuroscience research and recognized the contribution of interdisciplinary collaboration between CSIR-IICT and CSIR-CCMB in advancing female-focused neuropsychiatric research.

 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/telangana/teams-led-by-csir-women-scientists-report-advances-in-research-on-depression-mechanisms-in-females/article70846831.ece