Hanne Demant Hansen
MSc in Molecular Biology, PhD student
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Hanne Demant HansenMSc in Molecular Biology, PhD student
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Validation of PET tracers for in vivo imaging of cerebral 5-HT2A and 5-HT7 receptors
Non-invasive, in vivo PET studies of the serotonin (5-HT)
system’s occupancy and availability will provide a significant
advance in the understanding of neurobiology in general and of
neuropsychiatric disorders in particular.
Most radiotracers for the 5-HT2A receptor are antagonist, however,
agonist tracers should be more sensitive to extracellular changes in
endogenous agonist, since they only compete with receptors in the high
affinity state that are also susceptible to neurotransmitter binding.
In my project it will be investigated whether these 5-HT2A receptor
agonists PET-radiotracers possess higher sensitivity to endogenous
fluctuations in 5-HT.
The 5-HT7 receptor has been implicated in a variety of CNS disorders,
including schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, migraine, and control of
circadian rhythm. Therefore, it has become an attractive therapeutic
target, and in the past years intense efforts have led to the
identification of promising 5-HT7 receptor selective ligands. In this
project, we will develop and evaluate a PET radiotracer for imaging the
5-HT7 receptor, such a PET radiotracer does currently not exist.
| 2010 - | PhD Student at the Neurobiology Research Unit, Rigshospitalet |
| 2009 - 2010 | Stay at Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tübingen, Germany |
| 2004 - 2009 | MSc Molecular Biology, Aarhus University |
Kragh CL, Lund LB, Febbraro F, Hansen HD, Gai WP, Richter-Landsberg C, Jensen PH, 2009, ”alpha-synuclein aggregation and Ser129 phosphorylation dependent cell death in oligodendroglial cells.” J Biol Chem. 2009 Apr 10;284(15):10211-22.
Andersen LM, Wind T, Hansen HD, Andreasen PA, “A cyclic peptidylic inhibitor of murine urokinase-type plasminogen activator: changing species specificity by substitution of a single residue.” Biochem J 2008 Jun 15;412(3):447-57.