GELIFES Seminars - Ivana Jaric

Ivana Jaric (University of Zurich)

Ovarian hormone status

From unwanted noise to necessity in neuroscience research on sex differences

For decades, female subjects have been systematically excluded from preclinical neuroscience research, largely due to the assumption that ovarian hormone fluctuations would introduce unwanted variability, requiring larger cohorts and more complex study designs. Although recent evidence highlights that ovarian hormone status shapes brain physiology and contributes to psychiatric disorder risk, it remains largely overlooked in preclinical settings.
In this talk, Dr. Jaric will discuss how the ovarian reproductive cycle, and its natural or pharmacological disruption, drive changes in hippocampal molecular and structural plasticity in ways that may underlie female-specific vulnerability to anxiety and depression. She will further demonstrate how accounting for, or ignoring, ovarian hormone status critically affects reproducibility, generalizability, and translational relevance in sex-inclusive study designs. Finally, Dr. Jaric will outline strategies for integrating endocrine state into preclinical and broader neuroscience research to enhance data interpretability and deepen our understanding of sex differences.

Biosketch:
Dr. Ivana Jaric is a Group Leader at the Institute of Laboratory Animal Science at the University of Zurich. She earned her PhD in biology, with a focus on female reproductive endocrinology, at the University of Belgrade. During her postdoctoral work at Fordham University, she identified sex-specific epigenetic regulation in the female mouse hippocampus across the estrous cycle, providing new insight into female vulnerability to psychiatric disorders. At the University of Bern, she explored the links between phenotypic plasticity and poor reproducibility and established an independent research line examining how environmental conditions shape reproductive and behavioral phenotypes, with implications for sex-inclusive studies. Currently, her group focuses on improving the translational relevance of rodent studies that include both sexes and on elucidating epigenetic mechanisms underlying female-specific susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. More specifically, she investigates how ovarian hormonal dynamics influence mood disorder risk under physiological conditions, during cycle disruption, and in the context of endometriosis. She also chairs the EU SABV COST Action, the first European network dedicated to strengthening SABV policy in preclinical biomedical research.