Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Urs Meyer
Area of Research
Description of Research Interest
Dr. Meyer obtained his PhD from the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and holds a Full Professor position at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. The main fields of Prof. Meyer’s expertise are behavioral neurosciences and pharmacology. He is widely known for his preclinical work related to animal models of neurodevelopmental disorders, which aims to address the question of how early-life environmental adversities such as prenatal infection and stress can influence brain development and shape the risk of long-term brain abnormalities. His work combines behavioral tests, molecular assays and neuroanatomical techniques in rodent models and uses pharmacological approaches with the aim to establish novel symptomatic and preventive treatments against chronic brain disorders with neurodevelopmental origins.
As part of his main research activities, Prof. Meyer’s research group is also devoted to refine existing behavioral and pharmacological techniques as applied to small laboratory rodents, such as mice. For example, they have recently developed the micropipette-guided drug administration (MDA) method, which represents a novel alternative to the oral gavage procedure with applicability for acute and chronic per os treatments in small laboratory rodents such as mice.
Special Expertise
- Behavioral phenotyping in rodents
- Chemogenetics
- Epigenetic analyses
- In vivo pharmacological assessments
- Microscopy
- Rodent models of developmental exposure to environmental adversities
- Rodent models of maternal immune activation (MIA)
- Vector-based gene silencing tools
Shareable Platforms, Services, Equipment & Infrastructure
- State-of-the-art testing apparatuses for deep phenotyping in mice, including tests for innate anxiety and learned fear, sociability and social memory, sensory motor gating, and various forms of learning and memory
- In vivo microdialysis in freely behaving mice
