Position: NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Head of Rebecca Cooper Laboratory

Email: anddali@unimelb.edu.au

Phone: 613 9388 1633

Fax: 613 5427 1175

Campus: 155 Oak Street, Parkville VIC 3052 1 and NNF Level 2, 161 Barry Street

Research Interests:

Brian Dean is most interested in understanding the molecular pathology of schizophrenia. Dean's major focus of research is on the role of muscarinic receptors in the pathology and treatment of schizophrenia and in using high-throughput screening techniques to identify proteins and transcripts that are altered in the CNS of subjects with schizophrenia. The eventual aim of these studies is to identify new drug targets that will give the potential to improve the treatment of subjects with schizophrenia.

Techniques Used:

Brian Dean uses postmortem human CNS to identify proteins and transcripts that are altered in the CNS of subjects with schizophrenia. Altered proteins are identified using 1 or 2D electrophoresis, Western blotting, ELISA assays, in situ radioligand binding with autoradiography, membrane binding assays and both high and low pressure chromatography. Changes in levels of transcripts are identified using in situ hybridisation, Northern blot analyses and quantitative PCR.

Student Opportunities:

Students at the undergraduate, honours or postgraduate level can study under Brian Dean's supervision. Dean has a strong commitment to training students who wish to study the underlying pathology of psychiatric disease.