Jonas Hannestad, MD, PhD

Clinician, Psychiatry

Mentors

Julie Staley, Ph; John Krystal, MD; Erol Fikrig, MD

Background

Dr. Hannestad is a Clinician and Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry. He received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Messina in Italy and his Medical degree from the University of Oviedo Medical School in Spain.  He did his residency in Psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine and the Yale University School of Medicine and was Chief resident at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit, Yale University.  Dr. Hannestad completed a Neuroimaging Research Fellowship at Yale.   His long-term career goal is to study brain inflammation in various psychiatric disorders that have been associated with inflammation, and to evaluate the ability of novel anti-inflammatory and antidepressant medications to inhibit inflammatory processes in the brain.

Project Summary

Dr. Hannestad’s project, SPECT imaging of endotoxin-induced inflammation in the brain aims to use endotoxin to induce brain inflammation and depressive symptoms in healthy subjects, and to use neuroimaging to measure inflammation in the brain.  The study uses a SPECT radiotracer that binds to the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor (PBR), an intracellular protein expressed in glia during inflammation. Preliminary data shows that this radiotracer, 123I-CLINDE, penetrates the blood-brain barrier and that expression increases during alcohol-induced inflammation in macaques. Dr. Hannestad will correlate regional 123I-CLINDE uptake with repressive symptoms and plasma levels of inflammatory mediators of interest.