Carl Björkholm

I received my pharmacist degree from Uppsala University in 2005. After graduation, I worked with CNS in vivo pharmacological studies at AstraZeneca and since 2008 I am pursuing my graduate studies in Professor Torgny H. Svensson’s group at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. My focus is on the pharmacological treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders and in my PhD project I investigate augmentation strategies in major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. More specifically, I have, at the mechanistical level, analyzed the effects of combining antidepressant and atypical antipsychotic drugs, a strategy commonly used in both the above mentioned disorders. In this work I have used in vivo behavioral and biochemical techniques as well as in vitro intracellular electrophysiological recordingsThe study that I presented at the 2011 SCNP meeting has now been published in European Neuropsychopharmacology (Björkholm et al., 2012. Epub Jun 23, 2012) and I plan to defend my thesis in the autumn of 2013.