Rodrigo Cunha

Rodrigo Cunha
Centro de Neurociências e Biologia Celular (CNC), Portugal
Adenosine A2A receptors as a new opportunity to manage and detail the neurobiology of emotional distress
Project leader

Adenosine is a stress signal acting through adenosine A1 receptors (A1R) to decrease cellular activity and through adenosine A2A receptors (A2AR) to trigger adaptative responses and degeneration upon overactivation. By combining behavioral, neurochemical electrophysiological and Optogenetic approaches, we first defined that A2AR up-regulation and overactivation is a biomarker of brain diseases and is both strictly necessary and actually sufficient to trigger the dysfunction of mood and memory in different animal models of neuropsychiatric diseases by controlling the stability and the plasticity of synaptic connections in brain circuits. This also provided a golden opportunity to identify the most critical brain circuits undergoing maladaptive function to cause trigger mood disorders (mainly amygdala and lateral septum) and abnormal fear responses (ventral hippocampus and amygdala). Their detailed physio-pharmacological characterization is now hoped to unveil novel opportunities for therapeutic intervention to manage depression and post-traumatic stress disorders and provides the rationale to understand the mood-normalizing properties of caffeinated coffee.

Rodrigo Cunha is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine where he heads the Institute of Biochemistry and he is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra (CNC) and Scientific Coordinator of MIA-Portugal (Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing). He is part of the Steering Committee of the European Neuroscience Campus, the National representative of the Network of European Neuroscience Institutes and a scientific consultant of the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC). He heads the group ‘Purines at CNC’, focusing on caffeine neuroprotection and purinergic modulation; his group is constituted by 5 resident PhD researchers, 3 post-docs and 5 PhD students. He has published over 280 papers with an h factor of 72. He has trained over 35 PhD students and 20 post-doctoral fellows and attracted funds from American and European agencies and private companies.

• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rodrigo-Cunha-4

• https://www.cienciavitae.pt/portal/CF1A-8BED-B840

Neuromodulation by adenosine and ATP in the nervous system: adenosine and ATP receptors (expression, binding characteristics, coupling to transducing systems, desensitisation), formation and inactivation of ATP and adenosine, physiological roles (control of neurotransmitter release, of ion channels and of synaptic transmission and plasticity) and role in physio-pathology (aging, hypoxia, epilepsy, diabetic neuropathies, stress, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, neuro-inflammation).

Moreira-de-Sá A, Lourenço VS, Canas PM, Cunha RA (2021) Adenosine A2A receptors as biomarkers of brain diseases. Frontiers in Neuroscience 15: 702581. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.702581.

Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra
Rua Larga - Faculdade de Medicina, 1ºandar - POLO I Universidade de Coimbra
3004-504 Coimbra
Portugal

http://www.cnbc.pt