One Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences researcher is examining how early life experiences shape brain development and influence health later in life.

Swarup Mitra, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology at OSU-CHS and research project leader at the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA).

In August, Mitra was awarded a $3.1 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 Grant for his project titled “A Novel Gut-Brain Pathway Underlying Early Life Stress.”

“An NIH R01 grant is one of the most competitive and respected forms of federal research funding in biomedical science. For me, it represents an important validation that the scientific questions we are asking are significant and that our approach has the potential to make an impact,” he said.

The question Mitra and his lab aim to answer is how early life experiences shape brain development and influence health later in life.

For this project specifically, they are studying how stress early in life changes the gut microbes and their communication with the brain to influence behavior. This network is known as the gut-brain axis.

Current research reveals that adverse childhood experiences are associated with a high risk of developing health problems later in life, such as depression, anxiety, substance use disorders and other psychiatric conditions later in life.

However, Mitra said there is not much detailed research on the biological influence.

“We do not fully understand the biological mechanisms connecting those experiences to changes in the brain. Our work is asking whether the microbiome, the trillions of microorganisms living in our gastrointestinal tract, may be one of those important links,” he said.

Utilizing a mix of behavioral neuroscience, molecular biology, genomic and metabolic approaches, among others, Mitra’s research team will examine how early life stress affects the gut microbiome and if those changes influence the brain.

Preliminary data suggest that adverse childhood experiences reduce beneficial bacteria in the gut microbiome.

The working hypothesis is that these microbial changes alter the production of metabolites, chemicals produced in relation to metabolism, and impact neural and behavioral development.

“We’re not simply asking if stress changes the microbiome. We want to know which microbial changes matter, what they produce, how those signals reach the brain and whether restoring those pathways can reverse the consequences of early life stress,” Mitra said.

By studying the systems together, the research team aims to identify the biological chain of events that connect an early life experience to a later in life outcome.

Mitra emphasized that this research is not suggesting that changing someone’s microbiome will prevent psychiatric disease, but rather is the first step toward developing more precise interventions.

The research will be conducted over five years with the support of the NIH R01 grant.

Mitra said the grant will give his team the resources needed to pursue their project in greater depth. It also represents the strength of biomedical research at OSU-CHS.

“The fact that researchers at OSU-CHS are competing successfully for major NIH funding allows us to build research programs, train the next generation of scientists and contribute discoveries that ultimately improve human health,” he said.