Depression is a common mental disorder, affecting more than 300 million people of all ages and about twice as many women as men worldwide. Less than 50% of depressed patients achieve remission following several pharmacological interventions. For this reason, it becomes pivotal to better understand the underlying disease aetiology and explore approaches that improve the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs. This will reduce suicide and mortality rates, and promote mental health and well-being at all ages. Many depressed patients often have disrupted neuroendocrine rhythms. For example, cortisol loses its daily rhythm, which might in turn disrupt other peripheral clocks; a vicious cycle, which is understudied. Soraia will address this issue by combining expertise from her current lab in Coimbra on a bona fide model of depression with a novel method to analyse circadian function from single tissue samples developed at Warwick. This will allow to answer two main questions, relevant to understand depression: (1) Does a depression-like state shift peripheral clocks? (2) Do selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors effect the circadian clock?

In addition to the £5000 for consumables for this collaborative project with the Chrono Lab at Warwick, she has also won support from her home institution the University of Coimbra, Portugal, for travel expenses during her time at Warwick, which will start in October 2023.