Sat. Oct 12, 2019 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM Room 17 (Suehiro)

Organizer / Chair: ‌‌Gavin Stewart DAWE (‌Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore), Co-chair: Masaki TANAKA (Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan)/ Masabumi MINAMI (Department of Pharmacology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Science, Hokkaido University, Japan), Discussant: ‌Toshihisa OTSUKA (Department of Biochemistry, Graduate School of Medicine / Faculty of Medicine, University of Yamanashi, Japan)

Relaxin-3, an relaxin/insulin-like family peptide, and its receptor RXFP3 have been proposed to modulate emotional-behavioural functions such as arousal and behavioural activation, appetite regulation, stress responses, anxiety, memory, sleep and circadian rhythm. Relaxin-3 is expressed primarily in the brain where it is found most prominently neurones of the nucleus incertus (NI). The NI in the midline tegmentum close to the fourth ventricle projects widely throughout the brain. Over recent years, a number of preclinical studies have explored the function of the NI and relaxin-3 signalling, including reports of mRNA or peptide expression changes in the NI in response to behavioural or pharmacological manipulations, effects of lesions or electrical or pharmacological manipulations of the NI, effects of central microinfusions of relaxin-3 or related agonist or antagonist ligands on physiology and behaviour, and the impact of relaxin-3 gene deletion or knockdown. Together the available evidence suggests that targeting the nucleus incertus network and relaxin-3/RXFP3 system may be novel therapeutic approach in neuropsychiatric disorders including anxiety disorders, depression, and eating disorders. This symposium will explore the most recent evidence indicating that the relaxin-3/RXFP3 system may be novel therapeutic target for neuropsychiatric disorders and advances in the development of ligands for the RXFP3 receptor.