Tomas Hökfelt

Tomas Gustav Magnus Hökfelt (born June 29, 1940 in Stockholm ) is a Swedish neuroscientist and cell biologist .

Life

Hökfelt graduated from high school in Hamburg in 1960 and then studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute , where he received his doctorate in 1968 under Nils-Åke Hillarp. He was then assistant professor there and, from 1979 until his retirement in 2006, professor of histology and cell biology in the neurosciences department. He was also in the Faculty of Biotechnology at the Royal Swedish Technical University in Stockholm.

plant

Hökfelt deals with neurotransmitters and neuropeptides , using mainly histochemical techniques ( immunohistochemistry , in situ hybridization ), but also molecular biological methods including the generation of some transgenic mouse lines. In particular, he researched the role of neuropeptides, three of which (substance P, Galanin , NPY) were discovered at the Karolinska Institute, and their role, for example, in pain, depression and epilepsy. In 1977 he and colleagues discovered that several neurotransmitters were present in certain nerve cells (in sympathetic ganglion cells of guinea pigs, which had somatostatin as a neurotransmitter in addition to norepinephrine). The principle of coexistence he formulated (one neuron - several neurotransmitters) replaced the previously prevalent Dale principle (one neuron - one neurotransmitter).

In 2001 he and his colleagues were able to prove that the neurotransmitter galanin plays a role in epilepsy: in transgenic mouse lines with overexpression of galanin, a delay in the experimental triggering of epilepsy was found.

He also investigated the causes of anorexia nervosa with Serguei Fetissov as an autoimmune disease .

Awards, memberships, publishing

In 2000 he received the Neuronal Plasticity Prize and in 1987 the Belgian Artois-Baillet-Latour Prize. In 1988 he received the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award in Neuroscience, 1978 the Floman Award, 1979 the Erik Fernström Award for Young Scientists, 1984 the Anniversary Award of the Swedish Medical Association, 1985 the Award of the New York Academy of Sciences in Biology and Medicine, 1987 the InBev-Baillet Latour Health Prize , the Pasarow Award in 2002 and the Grande Médaille of the Académie des sciences in 2007 . He is an external member of the National Academy of Sciences (1984), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1985), the Academia Europaea (1989), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2000) and Honorary member of the Finnish Histochemical Society, the Center for Neuroscience at University College, London, the American Association of Anatomists. He has multiple honorary doctorates (Copenhagen, Tampere, Ferrara, Bordeaux). In 2005 he received the Endocrine Regulation Prize and in 2007 the Grande médaille de l'Académie des sciences . In 2012 Hökfelt was awarded the Golden Kraepelin Medal and the Erasmus Medal of the Academia Europaea.

With Anders Björklund he was editor of the Handbook of Chemical Neuroanatomy (21 volumes, Elsevier, 1983-2005). He was co-editor of many journals such as Brain Research and Neuroscience.

Fonts

• with LG Elfvin, R. Elde, M. Schultzberg, M. Goldstein, R. Luft: Occurence of somatostatin-like immunoreactivity in some peripheral sympathetic noradrenegic neurons . In: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences Vol. 74, 1977, pp. 3587-3591, PMID 16592433
• with O. Johansson, A. Ljungdahl, JM Lundberg, M. Schultzberg: Petidergic neurones . In: Nature , Vol. 284, 1980, pp. 515-521
• Neuropeptides in perspective: the last ten years . In: Neuron , Volume 7, 1991, pp. 867-879
• with M. Kokaia, K. Holberg, A. Nanobashvili, ZQ Xu, Z. Kokaia, U. Lendahl, S. Hilke, E. Theodorsson, U. Kahl, T. Bartfai, O. Lindvall: Suppressed kindling epileptogenesis in mice with ectopic overexpression of galanin . In: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences , Vol. 98, 2001, pp. 14006-14011, PMID 11698649
• with D. Stanic, G. Paratcha, F. Ledda, H. Herzog, AS Kopin: Peptidergic influences in proliferation, migration and placement of neuronal progenitors in the adult mouse forebrain . In: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. , Volume 105, 2008, pp. 3610-3615
• with Serguei Fetissov, J. Harro, M. Jaanisk, A. Järv, I. Podar, J. Allik, I. Nilsson, P. Sakthivel, AK Leffvert: Autoantibodies against neuropeptides are associated with psychological traits in eating disorders . In: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. , Vol. 102, 2005, pp. 14865-14870, abstract

Web links

• Homepage at the Karolinska Institute
• Old CV at the Artois-Baillet-Latour-Prize (PDF; 15 kB)