Research path
One question, followed from signalling to single cells
How does a developing nervous system build itself, and how do drugs and the environment change that? Each step below raised the problem the next one had to solve.
A research path
One line of enquiry, carried across four countries, two model systems and two research groups. Each step raised the problem the next one had to solve.
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2016 to 2018
How a signalling pathway shapes what a neuron becomes
Work on p53 and the MAPK cascade placed p53 at a defined position in the programme controlling neuronal differentiation. Blocking ERK1/2 then raised dopamine release: the same cascade that drives a cell to differentiate also restrains what it secretes.
Sechenov Institute, St Petersburg · first author on both -
2017 to 2018
Learning to build human tissue
Wnt signalling in central nervous system development at Biocenter Oulu, on funding I secured myself, adding CRISPR editing and iPSC-derived organoid culture. A short mission at Oslo University Hospital added cerebral organoid and spinal cord production.
University of Oulu · Oslo University Hospital · own grants, ~€31,500 -
2021
Where drugs go in the developing brain
I designed a chicken embryo model to ask where drugs actually go in the developing brain. They arrive within minutes at clinically relevant concentrations, and how far they penetrate depends on the stage of development. The group went on to use the model for further studies.
University of Oslo · first author · my own methodological contribution -
2022 to 2023
One endpoint can point the wrong way
Two antiepileptics with different morphological signatures converged on a single developmental transcription factor, PAX6. Then two antidepressants raised the reassuring molecular marker while reducing neurite outgrowth. That happened with one drug and not the other. A single-endpoint study would have drawn the opposite conclusion.
University of Oslo · first author on both -
2025 to 2026
Carrying one question across unrelated systems
A drug-specific structural effect reproduced across a human cell line and an embryonic model, with a microRNA emerging as the bridge between them. In parallel, the first electrophysiological assessment of neuronal maturation in human iPSC-derived spinal cord organoids, where I ran the differentiation the study rests on.
University of Oslo · second author, co-conceptualisation and design -
2026 to now
Human neural tissue, one cell at a time
Bringing organoid culture and single-cell tools together to follow how individual neural cells respond to what reaches them.
NCMBM, University of Oslo