Contact
UCLA Mol & Medl Pharmacol
BOX 956948, B2-045 CHS
Los Angeles, CA 90095-6948
Phone: (310) 267-2637
Email:
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Biography
Born in Murska Sobota, Slovenia, Dr. Vladimir Kepe received his BS in chemistry in 1990 and his PhD (Chemistry) in 1996 from University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997 to the Barrio lab at UCLA as a post-doctoral fellow. Since then he has worked on a multitude of projects in organic synthetic chemistry, radiosynthesis, determination of biodistribution and dosimetry for new PET tracers, microPET imaging experiments, human PET imaging experiments and PET imaging data analysis. Since 2003 his focus has been on in vivo imaging of pathological brain protein aggregates with [F-18]FDDNP PET in sporadic and familial Alzheimer's disease, prion diseases, Down's syndrome, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease. His more recent interests include PET imaging of neuroreceptors (serotonin 1A), sodium dependent glucose transporters (SGLTs) and estrogen sulfortransferase in neurodegenerative disorders and related conditions.
Publications (selected peer-reviewed publications)
- Ercoli LM, Small GW, Siddarth P, Kepe V, Huang, SC, Miller KJ, Lavretsky H, Bookheimer SY, Barrio JR, Silverman DHS. Assessment of dementia risk in aging adults using both FDG-PET and FDDNP-PET imaging, Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012;27(10):1017-1027. doi: 10.1002/gps.2816. PMID: 22383132
- Kumar A, Kepe V, Barrio JR, Siddarth P, Manoukian V, Elderkin-Thompson V, Small GW. Protein binding in patients with late-life depression detected using [18F]FDDNP positron emission tomography. Archives of General Psychiatry 2011;68:1143-1150. doi: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.122. PMID: 22065530
- Merrill DA, Siddarth P, Saito N, Ercoli LM, Burggren AC, Kepe V, Lavretsky H, Miller KJ, Kim J, Huang SC, Bookheimer SY, Barrio JR, Small GW. Memory self-appraisal measures and brain PET of amyloid and tau in non-demented people, Int Psychogeriatr 2012;24(7):1076-1084. PMID: 22335970; PMCID: PMC3350563
- Petric A, Johnson SA, Pham HV, Li Y, Ceh S, Golobic A, Agdeppa ED, Timbol G, Liu J, Keum G, Satyamurthy N, Kepe V, Houk KN, Barrio JR. Dicyanovinylnaphthalenes for neuroimaging of amyloids and relationships of electronic structures and geometries to binding affinities. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2012;109(41):16492-16497. PMCID: PMC3478600
- Protas HD, Kepe V, Hayashi KM, Klunder AD, Braskie MN, Ercoli L, Siddarth P, Bookheimer SY, Thompson PM, Small GW, Barrio JR, Huang SC. Prediction of cognitive decline based on hemispheric cortical surface maps of FDDNP PET. Neuroimage 2012;61(4):749-760. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.02.056. PMID: 22401755
- Small GW, Siddarth P, Kepe V, Ercoli LM, Burggren AC, Bookheimer SY, Miller KJ, Kim J, Lavretsky H, Huang SC, Barrio JR. Prediction of cognitive decline by positron emission tomography of brain amyloid and tau. Arch of Neurol 2012;69(2):215-222. PMID: 22332188
- Wilks M, Protas H, Wardak M, Kepe V, Small GW, Barrio JR, Huang SC. Automated VOI Analysis in FDDNP PET Using structural warping: validation through classification of Alzheimer's disease patients. Int J Alzheimers Dis 2012;2012:512069. PMID: 22482071; PMCID: PMC3310148
- Yu AS, Hirayama BA, Timbol G, Liu J, Diez-Sampedro A, Kepe V, Satyamurthy N, Huang SC, Wright EM, Barrio JR. Regional distribution of SGLT activity in rat brain In vivo. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 2012 Nov 14. [Epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1152/ajpcell.00317.2012. PMID: 23151803
Abstracts
- Chen ST, Siddarth P, Saito N, Haight T, Ercoli LM, Miller KJ, Lavretsky H, Kepe V, Barrio JR, Bookheimer SY, Small GW, Merrill DA. Sense of wellness is correlated with a marker for lower posterior cingulate gyrus amyloid binding in individuals with mild cognitive impairment. Annual Meeting of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. February 2012.
- Donoghue N. Ercoli L, Martinez J, Siddarth P, Kepe V, Huang SC, Miller KJ, Barrio JR, Small GW. Plaque and tangle imaging in non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment. 17th Annual UCLA Research Conference on Aging, Los Angeles, California, USA, June 2012.
- Ercoli, LM, Donoghue N, Jartinez J, Siddarth P, Kepe V, Huang SC, Miller KJ, Barrio JR, Lu PH, Ringman JM, Small GW. Plaque and tangle imaging and cognitive decline in nonamnestic mild cognitive impairment. Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2012.
- Kepe V, Bordelon Y, Boxer A, Liu J, Huang H, Mazziotta J, Mendez MF, Thiede F, Donoghue N, Small GW, Barrio JR. In vivo visualization of tau pathology in progressive supranuclear palsy with [F-18]FDDNP PET: Comparison with PD and FTLD. FTD 2012 Conference, 2012.
- Martinez J, Ercoli L, Donoghue N, Siddarth P, Kepe V, Huang SC, Miller KJ, Barrio JR, Small GW. Plaque and tangle imaging predicts cognitive decline in people with non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Abstracts from the 17th Annual Research Conference on Aging, June 2012.