Gitte Moos Knudsen

Education and academic degrees:

MD from University of Copenhagen in 1984. Board certified user of radioisotopes in 1986. FMGEMS exam (US) in 1989. Board certified in neurology in 1994. DMSc (dr.med.) from University of Copenhagen in 1994.

Research focus:

I am a translational neurobiologist and clinical neurologist with interest in advanced methodological developments that I subsequently apply in my research to address pertinent neurobiological and clinical issues. My scientific interests include blood-brain barrier transport, neurobiology of cerebral blood flow and metabolism and the neuropharmacology with particular emphasis on molecular brain imaging. I am PI of the precision medicine alliance BrainDrugs, funded by the Lundbeck Foundation. The alliance has the aim to identify which features can form a basis for decisions regarding the right treatment for the right patient with either major depressive disorder or epilepsy. I use PET brain scanning to image brain receptors and receptor occupancy, and fMRI to evaluate drug effects on the brain hemodynamic response as well as the brains regional interactions, i.e., functional connectivity.

Present appointments:

Chief neurologist at Dept of Neurology since 1999. From 2004, chairman at the Neurobiology Research Unit, Rigshospitalet and professor in Clinical Neurobiology at the Univ. Copenhagen.

Previous appointments:

Visiting scientist at NIH and at Stony Brook, USA (1985-90), and at Institute of Physiology, Bonn, Germany (1988-89). Visiting professor at MGH Harvard, Boston (2011-12). Clinical education has predominantly taken place at Rigshospitalet and has been interspersed by a three years appointment as research fellow (1986-1989) at the Dept. of Neurology, and by maternal leave in 1989, 1992, and 1995. Appointed as research professor in Neurobiology and chief neurologist in 1999. Professor of Neurology at University of Copenhagen 2005-2006 and of Neurobiology from 2004. Director of Center for Integrated Molecular Brain Imaging (Cimbi), 2006-16; based on a €11 mio grant donation from the Lundbeck Foundation to establish a neuroscience center. Director of Center for Experimental Medicine Neuropharmacology (NeuroPharm), 2015-22; based on a €2.1 mio grant donation from the Innovation Fund Denmark.

Leadership:

Leader of Neurobiology Research Unit (NRU) at Rigshospitalet since 2004. NRU encompasses around 120 staff members and affiliates, publishes around 60 peer-reviewed papers per year and has an annual budget of roughly $5 mio (€3.5 mio).
PI of the strategic alliance BrainDrugs since 2019, based on a Lundbeck Foundation grant of 2.1 mio €.

Positions of trust, reviews for journals, teaching, etc.:

Scientific Secretary 2001-05 of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism; President of the Danish Society for 2010-12; of the Scientific Ethics Committee for Copenhagen and Frederiksberg from 1998-2002; of the Research Council of the Medical Faculty at the University of Copenhagen 1999-2005; Chairman for the steering group for research laboratories at Rigshospitalet from 1999; Scientific Advisory Board Member, Health Science Faculty, University of Lund 2007-11, and the Danish Council for Strategic Research 2009-14.

Field Editor at the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology since 2013. Member of the Board of Directors of the Brain Prize 2013-17 and of the Brain Prize Council since 2017. Scientific advisor for the Kristian G. Jebsen Foundation, Norway 2014-22. Board member of the Elsass Foundation since 2015. Executive Committee of European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) from 2010, currently Past-president. Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for The Human Brain Project since 2017. Member of the International Evaluation Committee of the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam 2011-16, of the Presidential Commission for the Max Planck Institute for psychiatry, Munich, 2019-21 and of the Scientific Advisory Board of IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute), Barcelona, since 2020.

Examiner at PhD and DMSc theses in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, UK, and Sweden. Expert evaluator of professorship applications at Uppsala University in 2021. Member of the EU commissions Expert Panel for evaluation of research applications, Brussels, in 1999, 2000, 2005, 2013 and 2018, for the Norwegian Research Council 2006-7, Danish Multiple Sclerosis Foundation Research Committee 2007-9, and Swedish Research Council and VINNOVA 2005-2008 and 2015. Member of the Danish Health Advisory Group for the EU 7th Framework Program 2009-12. Reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation since 2021.

Teaching of pregraduate medical students and organizer of international courses for postgraduates.

Research, international collaboration, supervisor:

DMSc (dr.med.) thesis defended in 1994, title: 'Application of the double-indicator technique for measurement of blood-brain barrier permeability in humans'. The research has predominantly dealt with aspects of blood-brain barrier transport, and cerebral hemodynamics, and with molecular brain imaging.

International collaboration within the EUREKA Program (Dopimag EU1836) (1998-2000); the EU Program (COST) (1999-2000). Coordinator of EU Fifth Framework program on "Neuroreceptor mapping in patients with mild cognitive impairment", 2001-6. Member of the steering group of EU 6th Framework Network of Excellence DiMI (2005-10). EU 7th Framework program EURIPIDES (2007-12), InMIND (2011-17), PET-AlphaSy (2018-22), Serotonin and Beyond (2021-), and GoodVibes (2023-).

Since 1999 supervised a total of 31 PhD-students who have defended their PhD degree. Currently, I am supervising 6 PhD students and mentoring 6 post docs and 7 junior faculty members. My research institute supervises about 30 national and international pregraduate and PhD students every year.

Honours:

Mogens Fog Prize 1993 (lecture competition) of the Danish Neurological Society
Synthelabo Recherche Award 1994 of the Société de Circulation et Métabolism du Cerveau, France
Anne Bochardt Prize 1999 awarded by the Medical Society in Copenhagen
Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters since 2004
William Ottesen & Wife's Foundation 2008
Monrad Krohn Prize, Oslo, Norway 2010
Lassen Prize, 2011
Carlsberg Foundation Researcher Award for Sciences, 2014
Adjunct professor at the University of Vienna, Austria, 2016
Kuhl-Lassen Award, 2024

Publications:

Published more than 485 Medline indexed scientific papers and reviews as well as 29 books/book chapters - PubMed-search.
GoogleScholar: H-index: 76, Citations: >23,900.
Web of Science: H-index: 66, Citations: >18,200.
ResearcherID: C-1368-2013
ORCID-ID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1508-6866

Selected papers:

• Svarer C, Madsen K, Hasselbalch SG, Pinborg LH, Haugbøl S, Frøkjær VG, Holm S, Paulson OB, Knudsen GM. MR-based automatic delineation of volumes of interest in human brain PET-images using probability maps. NeuroImage 2005;24:969-79
• Erritzoe D, Frokjaer VG, Holst KK, Christoffersen M, Johansen SS, Svarer C, Madsen J, Rasmussen PM, Ramsøy T, Jernigan TL, Knudsen GM. In Vivo Imaging of Cerebral Serotonin Transporter and Serotonin2A Receptor Binding in 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or "Ecstasy") and Hallucinogen Users. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2011;68:562-76
• Ettrup A, Mikkelsen JD, Lehel S, Madsen J, Nielsen EO, Timmermann DB, Peters D, Knudsen GM. [11C]NS14492 as a novel PET radioligand for imaging cerebral α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors: in vivo evaluation and drug occupancy measurements. J Nucl Med 2011;52:1449-56
• Sander CY, Hooker JM, Catana C, Normandin MD, Alpert NM, Knudsen GM, Vanduffel W, Rosen BR, Mandeville JB. Neurovascular coupling to D2/D3 dopamine receptor occupancy using simultaneous PET/functional MRI. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013;110:11169-74
• Haahr ME, Fisher PM, Jensen CG, Frokjaer VG, Mc Mahon B, Madsen K, Baaré WFC, Lehel S, Norremolle A, Rabiner EA, Knudsen GM. Central 5-HT4 receptor binding as biomarker of serotonergic tonus in humans: a [11C]SB207145 PET study. Mol Psychiatry. 2014 Apr;19(4):427-32
• Fisher PM, Madsen MK, Mc Mahon B, Holst KK, Andersen SB, Laursen HR, Hasholt LF, Siebner HR, Knudsen GM. Three-week bright-light intervention has dose-related effects on threat-related corticolimbic reactivity and functional coupling. Biol Psychiatry. 2014 Aug 15;76(4):332-9
• Fisher PM, Ewers Haahr M, Jensen CG, Frokjaer VG, Siebner HR, Knudsen GM. Fluctuations in [11C]SB207145 PET Binding Associated with Change in Threat-Related Amygdala Reactivity in Humans. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2015 May;40(6):1510-8
• Knudsen GM, Jensen PS, Erritzoe D, Baaré WFC, Ettrup A, Fisher PM, Gillings N, Hansen HD, Hansen LK, Hasselbalch SG, Henningsson S, Herth MM, Holst KK, Iversen P, Kessing LV, Macoveanu J, Madsen KS, Mortensen EL, Nielsen FÅ, Paulson OB, Siebner HR, Stenbæk DS, Svarer C, Jernigan TL, Strother SC, Frokjaer VG. The Center for Integrated Molecular Brain Imaging (Cimbi) Database. NeuroImage. 2016 Jan 1;124(Pt B):1213-1219
• Mc Mahon B, Andersen SB, Madsen MK, Hjordt LV, Hageman I, Dam H, Svarer C, da Cunha-Bang S, Baaré W, Madsen J, Hasholt L, Holst K, Frokjaer VG, Knudsen GM. Seasonal difference in brain serotonin transporter binding predicts symptom severity in patients with seasonal affective disorder. Brain. 2016 May;139(Pt 5):1605-14
• Beliveau V, Ganz M, Feng L, Ozenne B, Højgaard L, Fisher PM, Svarer C, Greve DN, Knudsen GM. A High-Resolution In Vivo Atlas of the Human Brain's Serotonin System. J Neurosci. 2017 Jan 4;37(1):120-128
• da Cunha-Bang S, Hjordt LV, Perfalk E, Beliveau V, Bock C, Lehel S, Thomsen C, Sestoft D, Svarer C, Knudsen GM. Serotonin 1B receptor binding is associated with trait anger and level of psychopathy in violent offenders. Biol Psychiatry. 2017 Aug 15;82(4):267-274
• Hansen HD, Mandeville JB, Sander CY, Hooker JM, Catana C, Rosen BR, Knudsen GM. Functional characterization of 5-HT1B receptor drugs in nonhuman primates using simultaneous PET-MR. J Neurosci. 2017 Nov 1;37(44):10671-10678
• Madsen MK, Fisher PM, Burmester D, Dyssegaard A, Stenbæk DS, Kristiansen S, Johansen SS, Lehel S, Linnet K, Svarer C, Erritzoe D, Ozenne B, Knudsen GM. Psychedelic effects of psilocybin correlate with serotonin 2A receptor occupancy and plasma psilocin levels. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2019 Jun;44(7):1328-1334