Dr. Astrid Sasse

Dr. Sasse is a certified pharmacist who obtained her PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the Free University Berlin, Germany. She conducted post-doctoral studies funded by a Marie-Curie Fellowship (FP5) at INSERM in Paris, France on the identification of a human histamine H3 receptor subtype and genetic linkage of SNPs on histamine H3 and H4 receptors to schizophrenia. As a senior staff scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Goettingen, Germany she determined corticotropin-releasing factor receptor binding by ex vivo autoradiography, before joining the International Center for Neurotherapeutics (ICNT) at DCU in 2004 where she was involved in the development of neurotoxins derived from botulinum toxin by protein engineering methods. In October 2008, she was appointed as Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at TCD. Her research is focused on the development of small ligands for G-Protein coupled receptors (e.g., histamine H3/H4 receptor), and the identification, localization, and pharmacological characterization of new receptor subtypes, as well as the genetic linkage of those receptors to psychiatric disorders. She also has a special interest in alternative approaches to health, especially yoga and aromatherapy.

  Ageing, memory and other cognitive processes   Alzheimer's disease   Analytical chemistry   Biomedical sciences   Clinical genetics   Commercialisation of scientific research   Drug development and evaluation   Drug discovery   Drug discovery, profiling, targeting   Imaging Techniques   In vitro testing, trial methods   Medicinal Chemistry   Molecular Biology   Neurochemistry and neuropharmacology   Neuroendocrinology   Neuropharmacology   Neuroscience   Protein sequence, function and expression   Proteins, enzymology and protein engineering   Schizophrenia   Spectroscopy   Synthesis and new molecules