Dr. Marco Bartolato Named One of Four U Presidential Scholars
We want to congratulate Dr. Marco Bartolato for being named on of the U Presidential Scholars. This is a prestigious and well deserved honor. Rebecca Walsh, communications manager, senior vice president for Academic Affairs, wrote an article highlighting the four scholars. This is the section she wrote about Dr. Bartolato:
Marco Bortolato
Marco Bortolato, associate professor in the College of Pharmacy, studies the way brain-borne steroids (neurosteroids) can shape how stress exacerbates aggression, tics and impulsivity.
His international research partnerships include teams of basic and clinical scientists in Canada, Germany, France and Italy that are developing novel therapeutic agents, including cannabinoids, to treat pathological aggression, autism-spectrum disorder, Tourette syndrome, schizophrenia and impulse-control disorders like pathological gambling. His multi-disciplinary teams at the U are studying violence in humans and animal models to study therapies for opioid use disorder.
Bortolato’s research group discovered that neurosteroids mediate the role of stress in many neuropsychiatric disorders.
“My goal is understanding how the integration of genetic predisposition and environmental factors—specifically, stress—shapes mental health,” he said. “We are trying to build on these discoveries to develop new drugs to facilitate the implementation of psychological therapies for a wide range of disorders.”