Biography
Professor Robert A. Harris
Professor Robert A. Harris (Bob) was born in Harpenden in Southern UK in 1966. He conducted a Bsc.Hons undergraduate degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic, majoring in Parasitology in 1987. PhD studies at University College London studying innate immune agglutinins in Schistosoma host snail species with Terry Preston and Vaughan Southgate as supervisors culminated with a thesis defence in early 1991. A 2.5 year postdoc at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Paul Kaye’s research group ensued, with focus on understanding the intracellular fate of Leishmania spp. protozoans in macrophages. Bob was awarded a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellowship that permitted his relocation to the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) in the spring of 1994. A postdoc period was spent split between the labs of Anders Örn and Tomas Olsson, in which he studied Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma bruceii protozoan proteins. Bob became an Associate Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in 1999, heralding his establishment as a PI. Bob started to work with autoimmune diseases in 1996 and began study of therapy using live parasite infections or parasite molecules. His research group has developed autoantigen-specific vaccines, defined the effects of post-translational biochemical molecules on autoantigenicity and developed a macrophage adoptive transfer therapy that prevents pathogenesis in several experimental disease models. He became Professor of Immunotherapy in Neurological Diseases in 2013. In recent years research focus has centred on understanding the immunopathogenesis of incurable neurodegenerative diseases, with particular emphasis on development of immunotherapies directed at microglial cells as potential therapeutic paradigms.
Bob Harris CV July 2020
ERIK HERLENIUS GROUP
Development of autonomic control
About
Immature or deficient autonomic control is a common problem in infants born at a premature age and is of central importance in apneas, secondary hypoxic brain damage and sudden infant death syndrome.
PER ERIKSSON GROUP
Research
For better understanding of disturbances in respiratory control we study early development of cardiorespiratory control, brainstem neural networks and its associations with normal and pathological breathing. The conceptual change introduced by our recent data that endogenous prostaglandins are central pathogenic factors in respiratory disorders and the hypoxic response, open new diagnostic and therapeutic avenues that should significantly better the diagnostics and treatment of newborns and adult patients.
Inflammation is a major culprit in breathing disorders and we hypothesize that by using a newly developed urinary prostaglandin biomarker we can screen, detect and protect against inflammation related breathing disorders.
Our collaborative efforts enable us to move from a clinical problem to molecular understanding of the disease and studies are performed in patients, animal & in vitro models.
Our research is focused on the development of autonomic control with normal and paediatric patients as the target. Autonomic dysfunction in breathing and circulatory control often has its origin in neurodevelopment disorders. Furthermore, our basic research in developmental neuroscience how neural activity and stem cells form activity dependent networks is vital for the development of therapeutic interventions.
Read more
Contact: communication@cmm.se
CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE
Eating disorders
IDA NILSSON TEAM
Research
The research of our team is focused on the eating disorders anorexia nervosa (AN). AN is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by restriction of energy intake leading to a significantly low body weight, an intense fear of weight gain, and a distorted experience of one’s own body weight or shape. The course of AN can be prolonged and may lead to enduring disability, in particular for the individuals with the often called severe and enduring AN. With a 10% mortality, AN is among the most lethal of all psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, there is still no evidence-based pharmacological treatment for AN, and the optimal treatment, psychological as well as pharmaceutical, is debated.
One central and unexplained feature of AN is the paradoxical response to negative energy balance. While most people cannot lose a few kilos, these individuals stay in an emaciated and starved condition commonly for many years. Even after therapeutic renourishment, their bodies commonly revert to what appears to be a negative set point, i.e. the inverse of happens for obese individuals. AN genome-wide association studies have yielded significant negative single-nucleotide-based genetic correlations with BMI and other anthropometric measures, which seems to indicate a genetic predisposition for a lower body weight set point in AN. However, we do not understand the (neuro)biological underpinnings of such a set point nor the mechanisms explaining the contradictory response to underweight in AN.
The overall goal of our group is to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in food intake in general, and in the elective starvation of AN in particular. Our main hypothesis involves dysregulated hypothalamic circuits. Upon defining the neurobiological mechanisms and molecular players involved in the paradoxical response to underweight in AN, will we be able to find new pharmacological targets, as well as vulnerability markers. Pharmacological therapy, preventing the continued starvation and the loss of weight after recovery, could be combined with the today most commonly used treatment for AN; psycho- and nutritional therapy. Finally, extending the understanding of the neurobiology of AN will reduce the stigma surrounding AN, thus promoting early treatment and reduced mortality.
Selected publications
Nilsson IAK, Millischer V, Göteson A, Hübel C, Thornton LM, Bulik CM, Schalling M, Landén. Aberrant inflammatory profile in acute but not recovered anorexia nervosa. Brain Behav Immun. 2020 May 7: S0889-1591(20)30253-1. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2020.05.024. Online ahead of print.
D'Addario C, Zaplatic E, Giunti E, Pucci M, Micioni Di Bonaventura MV, Scherma M, Dainese E, Maccarone M, Nilsson IA, Cifani C, Fadda P. Epigenetic regulation of the cannabinoid receptor CB1 in an activity-based rat model of anorexia nervosa. Int J Eat Disord. 2020 May;53(5):432-446.
Kong L, Nilsson IAK, Brismar K, Gissler M, Lavebratt C. Associations of different types of maternal diabetes and body mass index with offspring psychiatric disorders. JAMA Network Open. 2020 Feb 5.
V Florent, M Baroncini, P Jissendi-Tchofo, R Lopes, M Vanhoutte, S. Rasika, J-P Pruvo, J Vignau, J E Johansen, M Pigeyre, S G Bouret, I AK Nilsson#, Vincent Prevot#. Hypothalamic structural and functional imbalances in anorexia nervosa. Neuroendocrinology. 2019 Sep 5. #directed the work together
Nilsson IAK, Millischer V, Danylaité Karrenbauer V, Jureus A, Salehi A, Norring C, von Hausswolff-Juhlin Y, Schalling M, Blennow K, Bulik CM, Zetterberg H, Landén M. Plasma neurofilament light chain concentration is increased in anorexia nervosa. Transl Psych. 2019 Aug 1.
Kong L, Nilsson IAK, Gissler M, Lavebratt C. Associations of Maternal Diabetes and Body Mass Index With Offspring Birth Weight and Prematurity. JAMA Pediatrics. 2019 February 25.
Nilsson IAK. The anx/anx mouse – a valuable resource in anorexia nervosa research. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 2019 Feb 5.
Schaumberg K, Welch E, Breithaupt L, Hübel C, Baker JH, Munn-Chernoff MA, Yilmaz Z, Ehrlich S, Mustelin L, Ghaderi A, Hardaway AJ, Bulik-Sullivan EC, Hedman AM, Jangmo A, Nilsson IAK, Wiklund C, Yao S, Seidel M, Bulik CM. The Science Behind the Academy for Eating Disorders' Nine Truths About Eating Disorders. Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2017 Nov;25(6):432-450.
Bergström U, Lindfors C, Svedberg M, Johansen JE, Häggkvist J, Schalling M, Wibom R, Katz A, Nilsson IAK. Reduced metabolism in the hypothalamus of the anorectic anx/anx mouse. J Endocrinol. 2017 Apr;233(1):15-24.
Charlotte Lindfors, Abram Katz, Lars Selander, Jeanette E Johansen, Giulia Marconi, Martin Schalling, Tomas Hökfelt, Per-Olof Berggren, Sergei Zaitsev, Ida AK Nilsson. Glucose intolerance and pancreatic β-cell dysfunction in the anorectic anx/anx mouse. American Journal of Physiology – Endocrinology and Metabolism. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2015 Aug 15;309(4):E418-27.
Ida AK Nilsson, Charlotte Lindfors, Tomas Hökfelt, Martin Schalling, Jeanette E Johansen. Anorexia and hypothalamic degeneration. Anorexia, Vol 92, VH, UK: Academic Press, Elsevier, New York, 2013, pp. 27-60. (Invited author)
Lindfors C, Nilsson IA, Garcia-Roves PM, Zuberi AR, Karimi M, Donahue LR, Roopenian DC, Mulder J, Uhlén M, Ekström TJ, Davisson MT, Hökfelt TG, Schalling M, Johansen JE. Hypothalamic mitochondrial dysfunction associated with anorexia in the anx/anx mouse. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Nov 1;108(44):18108-13.
Nilsson IA, Thams S, Lindfors C, Bergstrand A, Cullheim S, Hökfelt T, Johansen JE. Evidence of hypothalamic degeneration in the anorectic anx/anx mouse. Glia. 2011 Jan;59(1):45-57.
Hökfelt T, Stanic D, Sanford SD, Gatlin JC, Nilsson I, Paratcha G, Ledda F, Fetissov S, Lindfors C, Herzog H, Johansen JE, Ubink R, Pfenninger KH. NPY and its involvement in axon guidance, neurogenesis, and feeding. Nutrition. 2008 Sep;24(9):860-8.
Nilsson I, Lindfors C, Fetissov SO, Hökfelt T, Johansen JE. Aberrant agouti-related protein system in the hypothalamus of the anx/anx mouse is associated with activation of microglia. J Comp Neurol. 2008 Mar 1;507(1):1128-40.
Johansen JE, Fetissov SO, Bergström U, Nilsson I, Faÿ C, Ranscht B, Hökfelt T, Schalling M. Evidence for hypothalamic dysregulation in mouse models of anorexia as well as in humans. Physiol Behav. 2007 Sep 10;92(1-2):278-82.
Nilsson I, Johansen JE, Schalling M, Hökfelt T, Fetissov SO. Maturation of the hypothalamic arcuate agouti-related protein system during postnatal development in the mouse. Brain Res Dev Brain Res. 2005 Mar 31;155(2):147-54.