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I am a PhD candidate in Professor Stéphanie Le Hellard's research group, affiliated with the Department of Clinical Science and the Bergen Center for Brain Plasticity. The goal of my project is to identify biological markers that dynamically change with response to psychotherapy and predict long-lasting treatment outcomes. We aim to better understand processes underlying the response to psychotherapy and treatment failure in a large-scale research effort, integrating clinical, genetic, epigenetic, and brain imaging data.

Höffler KD, Stavrum AK, Halvorsen MW, Eide TO, Hagen K, Thorsen AL, Ousdal OT, Kvale G, Crowley JJ, Haavik J, Ressler KJ, Hansen B, Le Hellard S. Epigenetic Markers of Response to Psychotherapy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. medRxiv. 2025 Oct 22. Preprint.

Höffler KD, Stavrum AK, Halvorsen MW, Eide TO, Hagen K, Høberg A; Nordic OCD and Related Disorders Consortium (NORDiC); Kvale G, Crowley JJ, Haavik J, Ressler KJ, Hansen B, Klengel T, Le Hellard S. Methylome-Wide Association Study of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Biol Psychiatry. 2026 Apr 7:S0006-3223(26)01133-9. 

Bäckman J, Kravchenko O, Halvorsen M, de Schipper E, Ivanova E, Kaldo V, Isacsson NH, Eide TO, Höffler KD, Mattheisen M, Hansen B, Kvale G, Hagen K, Haavik J, Mataix-Cols D, Crowley JJ, Wallert J, Rück C; Nordic OCD and Related Disorders Consortium (NORDiC). Genome-Wide Association Study of Symptom Change Following Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Common Mental Disorders. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2026 Mar 9. 

Stavrum AK, Sirignano L, Frid LM, Frank J, Foo JC, Spindola LM, Höffler KD, Oedegaard KJ, Haavik J, Rietschel M, Witt SH, Kessler U, Oltedal L, Le Hellard S. Epigenetic and blood markers associated with response to electroconvulsive therapy in patients with depressive disorders. Transl Psychiatry. 2025 Dec 3;16(1):32. 

Tesfaye M, Løkhammer S, Smajlagic D, Stavrum AK, Höffler KD, Page CM, Villar J, Shadrin A, Bekkhus M, Zayats T, Le Hellard S. Sex-Specific Cord Blood DNA Methylation Signatures for Childhood ADHD Symptoms. medRxiv. 2025 Oct 22. Preprint.

Höffler KD, Katrinli S, Halvorsen MW, Stavrum AK, O'Connell KS, Shadrin A, Djurovic S, Andreassen OA, Crowley JJ, Haavik J, Hagen K, Kvale G, Ressler K, Hansen B, Soares JC, Fries GR, Smith AK, Le Hellard S. Optimizing genetic ancestry adjustment in DNA methylation studies: a comparative analysis of approaches. Epigenetics Chromatin. 2025 Oct 14;18(1):69.

Strom NI, Gerring ZF, Galimberti M, Yu D, Halvorsen MW, Abdellaoui A, … Höffler KD, … Scharf JM, Stein MB, Gelernter J, Mathews CA, Derks EM, Mattheisen M. Genome-wide analyses identify 30 loci associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Nat Genet. 2025 Jun;57(6):1389-1401.

Halvorsen MW, de Schipper E, Bäckman J, Strom NI, Hagen K; Nordic OCD and Related Disorders Consortium (NORDiC); Lindblad-Toh K, Karlsson EK, Pedersen NL, Wallert J, Bulik CM, Fundín B, Landén M, Kvale G, Hansen B, Haavik J, Mattheisen M, Rück C, Mataix-Cols D, Crowley JJ. A burden of rare copy number variants in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mol Psychiatry. 2025 Apr;30(4):1510-1517.

Bäckman J, Wallert J, Halvorsen M, Roelstraete B, de Schipper E, Strom NI, Eide TO, Höffler KD, Mattheisen M, Hansen B, Kvale G, Hagen K, Haavik J; Nordic OCD and Related Disorders Consortium (NORDiC); Mataix-Cols D, Rück C, Crowley JJ. Association Between Polygenic Risk and Symptom Severity Change After Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2025 Mar 7:e33026.

Dror E, Fagnocchi L, Wegert V, Apostle S, Grimaldi B, Gruber T, Panzeri I, Heyne S, Höffler KD, Kreiner V, Ching R, Tsai-Hsiu Lu T, Semwal A, Johnson B, Senapati P, Lempradl A, Schones D, Imhof A, Shen H, Pospisilik JA. Epigenetic dosage identifies two major and functionally distinct β cell subtypes. Cell Metab. 2023 May 2;35(5):821-836.e7.

Blok LER, Boon M, van Reijmersdal B, Höffler KD, Fenckova M, Schenck A. Genetics, molecular control and clinical relevance of habituation learning. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2022 Dec; 143:104883.