H. Schellekens

Dr. Harriët Schellekens (h-index 35, >7700 citations) is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Anatomy & Neuroscience and a funded investigator with the APC Microbiome Ireland (http://apc.ucc.ie/). She received a PhD (2012) in Pharmacy from the University College Cork, Ireland and an MSc in Biology and Medical Biology (Hons; 2006) from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She has gained considerable expertise in the pharmaceutical industry in R&D and drug discovery at Organon NV (Akzo Nobel) and at Eirx therapeutics in assay design and building a focused drug discovery capability. She also works with Food for Health Ireland (FHI, http://www.fhi.ie/) towards the development of dairy-derived hydrolysates as functional foods and neutraceuticals. She is leading several industry funded projects within APC. She is a partner in the FP7 project SOPHIA, with a focus on obesity. Dr. Schellekens investigates the impact of diet & nutrition and the gut microbiome on human health and physiology, in particular in the regulation of appetite, feeding behavior, reward-processing and stress throughout life. She uses mechanistic and translational studies bridging basic and clinical aspects of neuroscience and nutrition to investigate the concept of the link between metabolic disease and mental health, and the potential amelioration of both via microbiome targeted approaches. Dr. Schellekens has established a targeted nutraceutical approach to identify novel functional pre- and probiotics, while at the same time gaining mechanistic insights into the dietary and microbiota-derived metabolites as mediators of gut-brain axis signaling. She has a specific interest in the impact of the gut microbiota on G-protein coupled receptor (GPCRs) pharmacology and immune-neuroendocrine pathways across the gut-brain axis and the complex relationship between food and mood. Dr Schellekens was awarded with the APC Industry & Entrepreneurship Award 21/22 at the #APCsymposium22, for her recent and ongoing success in establishing wholly funded APC-Industry collaborations. She was also recently recognized for being in the top 0.1% of scholars in ghrelin based research according to Expertscape. Harriet has published over 70 peer-reviewed publications, 4 book chapters, and has given scientific talks and seminars at >40 (inter)national conferences.

Papers in database

3

Primary author

1 paper

Years active

2021 – 2025

Health outcomes studied

2