• Blegdamsvej 3B

    2200 København N

  • Jagtvej 160

    2100 København Ø

  • Universitetsparken 2

    2100 København Ø

  • Source: Scopus
20152023

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Current research

I am an energetic and ambitious neuroscientist applying my skills from a master's degree in pharmacy and PhD in neurochemistry at the University of Copenhagen. I contribute to research striving to identify novel drug scaffolds with relevance for psychiatric disorders by screening natural products in neurotransmitter uptake- and binding assays. 

Short presentation

I am an enthusiastic and self-driven research scientist, with an organised work style, flexible mind-set and outgoing personality. I enjoy challenges, team-work and the pursuit of new knowledge. I have contributed to laboratory research since 2011, including two stays at excellent foreign universities. Having mastered multiple in vivo and in vitro laboratory techniques and complex data analysis approaches, I am prepared to face any new challenging research adventures.

Fields of interest

I am passionate about body and brain interactions, cellular energy and mitochondrial metabolism, neuroscience --in particular neurone-astrocyte relationship, neuroplasticity and neurotransmitter homeostasis--, cognition and memory formation, addiction and reward; (type three) diabetes; ageing. 

Knowledge of languages

Speaks and writes Danish and English fluently.

CV

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Current Position

May 2016
– ongoing        

Post doc, Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, UCPH, DK (supervisor Professor Dan Stærk)

Project (2019-ongoing): "Identifying novel drug scaffolds with relevance for psychiatric disorders by screening natural products in neurotransmitter uptake- and binding assays”

Project (2016-2018) in collaboration with industry partner: “Investigate the mechanisms underlying improved shelf-life of fermented milk-products”.

[Maternity leaves 15 Nov 2017 - 10 Aug 2018 (9 months) & 01 Mar 2020 - 28 Feb 2021 (12 months)]

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Other Current Responsibilities

 Mar 2019
– ongoing

Mar 2021
– ongoing

2016
– ongoing

 

Steering Committee member of the Social Capital Committee, University of Copenhagen, Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology

PostDoc/Assistant prof. forum contact person, University of Copenhagen, Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology

PharmaDanmark Club steering committee member, , University of Copenhagen, Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology

 

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Education

Feb 2013
– Apr 2016

PhD student, Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, UCPH, DK (supervisor Professor Helle S. Waagepetersen)
Dissertation: “Region Specific Evaluation of Cellular Metabolism in the Brain – Implications of Different Metabolic Mapping Strategies in Combination with NMR and GC-MS”
COURSE WORK – Data Visualisation, Project Management, Neuroanatomy of the Laboratory Animal, Responsible Conduct of Research, University Pedagogy, Neuron Glia Interactions, NMR Techniques in Drug Research, and multiple scientific summer schools. TEACHING – Pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, biochemistry.

Sep 2013
– Sep 2014

Postgraduate Fellow, Department of Diagnostic Radiology/MRRC, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Project: “Elucidating astrocyte-specific metabolic rates in multiple brain regions”

Sep 2010 – Sep 2012

M. Sc. Pharmacy, UCPH, DK
Thesis: “Investigating the neural consequences of prenatal nicotine exposure”

Jul   2011
– Jan 2012

Research exchange student, University of Bath, UK
Project:  “Exploring the role of learning and memory in drug addiction”

Sep 2006
– Sep 2010

B. Sc. Pharmacy, UCPH, DK

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Work Experience

Oct 2012
– Jan 2013

Manager, Global Pharmacovigilance, Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S, Copenhagen, DK

2007 – 2011

Student, Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S, Copenhagen, DK

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Introductory remarks on publicationslist

My latest (unpublished) results comprise the identification of compounds isolated from Eremophila species, capable of both potentiating and inhibiting the transport of dopamine through the dopamine transporter (DAT). I am currently seeking to characterise these compounds further and elucidate the mechanism by which they exert their action.

During my PostDoc with Professor Dan Stærk (2016-2019), conducted in tight collaboration with a food company, we identified and characterized a new antifungal peptide in fermented milk product containing bioprotective Lactobacillus cultures (McNair et al. 2018 FEMS Yeast), and established that competitive exclusion is a major bioprotective mechanism of Lactobacilli against Fungal Spoilage in Fermented Milk Products (Siedler et al. 2020 Appl Environ Microbiol).

Supervision of students during my PostDoc allowed me to contribute to excellent natural product research by Dr. Abd Malik, identifying novel antidiabetic zanthones in extracts of an endophyte (Malik et al. 2020 Fitoterapia), and by Maliheh Najari Beidokhti, highlighting the antidiabetic potential of ethanolic extracts of P. guajava leaves using multiple assays (Beidokhti et al. 2020 J Ethnopharmacol).

The work from my PhD (2013-2016) include thorough characterisation of cellular energy metabolism in acutely isolated hippocampal and cerebral cortical mouse brain slices using 13C-mapping, GC-MS and HPLC (McNair et al. 2017 Neurochem Res) and provides evidence of metabolic similarity of these two brain regions. Moreover, I propose new interesting approaches for interpreting 13C-mapping data. This work was followed-up by evaluating the specificity of 13C-substrates for assessing astrocytic and neuronal metabolism individually in acute brain slices (Andersen, McNair et al. 2017 J Neurosci Res). Other parts of my work in acute brain slices have contributed to a recent review discussing the role of glutamate dehydrogenase and amino transferases in connection to glutamate oxidation in astrocytes (McKenna, Stridt, McNair et al. 2016 J Neurosci Res).

As part of my PhD I also completed two large rodent ex vivo studies combining 13C-mapping with GC-MS and 13C/1H NMR, in collaboration with excellent researchers at Yale University and Harvard Medical School (USA), respectively. I reveal significant brain regional differences in the rate of pyruvate carboxylase, an astrocytic enzyme essential for de novo synthesis of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate (manuscript in progress). Furthermore, I provide data suggesting that the glutamate transporter GLT-1 expressed in neurons is important for glutamate homeostasis and synaptic energy metabolism in cerebral cortex (McNair et al. 2019 J Neurosci). Additional studies extend this hypothesis to the hippocampus and striatum (McNair et al. 2020 NERE)

Results from my undergraduate research (2011-2012) at Bath University (UK) provide indications of differential changes in neural plasticity induced by addictive drug exposure with and without the context of a place-preference learning task, measured as long-term potentiation in hippocampal slices. This work was presented on scientific poster at the British Pharmacology Society meeting in 2012 and my data formed the basis for further work within Prof. C. Bailey's group.

Finally, my Master’s thesis elucidates the significant impact of pre-natal exposure to nicotine on brain function, measured as calcium responses to glutamatergic stimulation in brain slice from pubs born of nicotine treated mice (McNair & Kohlmeier 2015 J Dev Orig Health Dis).

Keywords

  • Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
  • Neuroscience
  • Brain
  • Pharmacology
  • neuron
  • Neurotransmitter transporters
  • glutamat
  • Glucose metabolism
  • Amino acids
  • Energy metabolism
  • Astrocytes
  • Glia
  • Electrophysiology
  • Calcium imaging
  • Electron Transport
  • Glutamate transporters
  • Antifungal
  • bioactivity
  • mitochondria
  • Biochemistry
  • NMR
  • mass spectrometry
  • HPLC
  • Food Science

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