Short presentation

My mission is to identify innovative ways of treating diseases and making existing therapies better – in terms of safety and in terms of effectiveness. My methodological focus is on in vitro experiments of receptor binding and cellular signalling, combined with advanced data handling procedures (statistical learning, incl. deep learning). Being affiliated with both, the Molecular Pharmacology Group (together with the Wellendorph lab, the Jensen lab) and the Hauser Group, puts mine and my students´ research on the intersection of molecular pharmacology and data science.

Primary fields of research

My conceptual approaches to find innovative treatments encompass:

• Precision pharmacology – Signalling of GPCRs is diverse and dependent on certain ligands, certain receptors and their structural variants (e.g., isoforms, single-nucleotide variants, etc.) and different cellular pathways. My aim is to decipher the links between receptors, signalling pathways and pharmacological outcomes. Based on this knowledge, we aim to discover drugs with a better pathway phenotype linkage.
• GPCR pharmacogenomics – GPCRs are highly variable in the population. My aim is to study how structural variants of GPCRs can impact drug response and how this knowledge can be used in stratified and personalized decision making among existing medical alternatives.
• Multi-target directed ligands (MTDL) – a lot of long since applied drugs in neurological & psychiatric disorders target multiple receptors to mediate their actions and/or side effects. The MTDL approach aims to identify drugs with activity at synergistic targets and selectivity over non-beneficial targets. Therefore, we have identified several hit and lead molecules with strategical co-activity at several targets spanning over GPCRs, enzymes involved in neurotransmitter turnover, and epigenetic enzymes (Ph.D. thesis topic).
• From a pathophysiological point of view, my efforts are directed to neurological and psychiatric disorders, encompassing schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson´s disease, sleep disorders and multi-system disorders (Prader-Willi Syndrome).