Associate professor, School of Psychology, Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand

Professional and academic career

Bart Ellenbroek studied chemistry in Nijmegen where he obtained his MSc in 1982. He was lecturer in Pharmacology in Abha, Saudi Arabia (1982-1983) and visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine in Göttingen (1983-1984). On his return to the University of Nijmegen at the department of Psychoneuropharmacology, he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1988 (cum laude) with the PhD Thesis "Animal model for schizophrenia and neuroleptic drug action". He stayed on as assistant professor (1988 - 1999) and associate professor (1999 - 2006). From 2006 to 2011, Bart moved to a medium sized biotech company (Evotec) in Hamburg Germany, where he was responsible for the development of the in vivo neuropharmacology group. Since March 2011, he is back in academia as associate professor in the School of Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand.

Research  fields

Bart's main focus of research is the development of animal models for psychiatric diseases, including schizophrenia, depression and addiction. He was actively involved in the development of knock-out rats and in validating the PhenoTyper, a fully automated system for studying home-cage behavior, for studies with rats. He is (co)-author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is actively involved in organizing conferences and in several national and international scientific organizations. In addition he is co-editor in chief (together with Charles Marsden and Mark Geyer) on the book series “Current topics in behavioral Neurosciences” published by the Springer Verlag.

Recent publications: 

• Ellenbroek BA (2011) Psychopharmacological treatment of schizophrenia: What do we have, and what could we get? Neuropharmacology, in press.
• Ellenbroek BA (2010) Schizophrenia. In Encyclopaedia of behavioural Neuroscience vol 3 (Eds. Koob G, Thompson RF and LeMoal M), Oxford Academic Press, Oxford, pp.188-195.
• Calabrese F, Molteni R, Cattaneo A, Macchi F, Racagni G, Gennarelli M, Ellenbroek BA and Riva MA (2010) Chronic duloxetine treatment normalizes altered BDNF expression in serotonin transporter knockout rats through the modulation of specific neurotrophin isoforms. Mol Pharmacol 77: 846-853.
• Gemkow MJ, Davenport AJ, Harich S, Ellenbroek BA, Cesura A and Hallett D (2009) The histamine H3 receptor as a therapeutic drug target for CNS Drug Discov Today 14: 509-515.