David Rubinsztein | |
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Born | David Chaim Rubinsztein 1963 (age 60–61) |
Alma mater | University of Cape Town (MBChB, PhD) |
Known for | autophagy and polyglutamine expansions |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Autophagy Neurodegenerative diseases [4] |
Institutions | University of Cambridge Cambridge Institute for Medical Research Cambridge Drug Discovery Institute |
Thesis | Monogenic hypercholesterolemia in South Africans: familial hypercholesterolemia in Indians and familial defective apolipoprotein B-100 (1993) |
Doctoral advisor | Prof. D.R. van der Westhuyzen |
Website |
David Chaim Rubinsztein (born 1963) is the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research (CIMR), [5] Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge [6] and a UK Dementia Research Institute Professor.
Rubinsztein completed his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB) in 1986 and PhD in 1993 in the Medical Research Council/University of Cape Town Unit for the Cell Biology of Atherosclerosis. In 1993 he went to Cambridge as a senior registrar in Genetic Pathology. [7]
In 1997, Rubinsztein acquired his Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training at the University of Cambridge. He was appointed to a Personal Readership at the University of Cambridge in 2003. In 2005, he was promoted to Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge (personal chair). He has been an author on more than 400 scientific papers, [4] [8] and was ranked as the 4th most cited European author from 2007 to 2013 in cell biology. [9] Rubinsztein has been invited to give talks at major international conferences, including Gordon Research Conferences and Keystone Symposia. [10] [11] [12]
Rubinsztein has made major contributions to the field of neurodegeneration [4] with his laboratory's discovery that autophagy regulates the levels of intracytoplasmic aggregate-prone proteins that cause many neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] His lab has found that autophagy may be inhibited in various neurodegenerative diseases [18] and has elucidated the pathological consequences of autophagy compromise. [19] In addition his research has advanced the basic understanding of autophagy, identifying the plasma membrane as a source of autophagosome membrane [20] and characterising early events in autophagosome biogenesis,. [21] [22] [23] Furthermore, he studied how lysosomal positioning regulates autophagy. [24] His goal is to understand the links between these diseases and autophagy. He is currently focused on understanding how to induce autophagy in vivo to remove toxic proteins and avoid the development of neurodegenerative disease [5] [25]
Rubinsztein has won numerous awards including:
Autophagy is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-dependent regulated mechanism. It allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. Although initially characterized as a primordial degradation pathway induced to protect against starvation, it has become increasingly clear that autophagy also plays a major role in the homeostasis of non-starved cells. Defects in autophagy have been linked to various human diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer, and interest in modulating autophagy as a potential treatment for these diseases has grown rapidly.
The bafilomycins are a family of macrolide antibiotics produced from a variety of Streptomycetes. Their chemical structure is defined by a 16-membered lactone ring scaffold. Bafilomycins exhibit a wide range of biological activity, including anti-tumor, anti-parasitic, immunosuppressant and anti-fungal activity. The most used bafilomycin is bafilomycin A1, a potent inhibitor of cellular autophagy. Bafilomycins have also been found to act as ionophores, transporting potassium K+ across biological membranes and leading to mitochondrial damage and cell death.
A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Neuronal damage may also ultimately result in their death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple system atrophy, tauopathies, and prion diseases. Neurodegeneration can be found in the brain at many different levels of neuronal circuitry, ranging from molecular to systemic.Because there is no known way to reverse the progressive degeneration of neurons, these diseases are considered to be incurable; however research has shown that the two major contributing factors to neurodegeneration are oxidative stress and inflammation. Biomedical research has revealed many similarities between these diseases at the subcellular level, including atypical protein assemblies and induced cell death. These similarities suggest that therapeutic advances against one neurodegenerative disease might ameliorate other diseases as well.
Vojo Deretic, is distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Deretic was the founding director of the Autophagy, Inflammation and Metabolism (AIM) Center of Biomedical Research Excellence. The AIM center promotes autophagy research nationally and internationally.
Autophagy protein 5 (ATG5) is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the ATG5 gene located on chromosome 6. It is an E3 ubi autophagic cell death. ATG5 is a key protein involved in the extension of the phagophoric membrane in autophagic vesicles. It is activated by ATG7 and forms a complex with ATG12 and ATG16L1. This complex is necessary for LC3-I conjugation to PE (phosphatidylethanolamine) to form LC3-II. ATG5 can also act as a pro-apoptotic molecule targeted to the mitochondria. Under low levels of DNA damage, ATG5 can translocate to the nucleus and interact with survivin.
Microtubule-associated proteins 1A/1B light chain 3B is a protein that in humans is encoded by the MAP1LC3B gene. LC3 is a central protein in the autophagy pathway where it functions in autophagy substrate selection and autophagosome biogenesis. LC3 is the most widely used marker of autophagosomes.
Autophagy related 16 like 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ATG16L1 gene. This protein is characterized as a subunit of the autophagy-related ATG12-ATG5/ATG16 complex and is essentially important for the LC3 (ATG8) lipidation and autophagosome formation. This complex localizes to the membrane and is released just before or after autophagosome completion.
Autophagy-related protein 9A is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ATG9A gene.
Serine/threonine-protein kinase ULK1 is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the ULK1 gene.
Autophagy-related protein 8 (Atg8) is a ubiquitin-like protein required for the formation of autophagosomal membranes. The transient conjugation of Atg8 to the autophagosomal membrane through a ubiquitin-like conjugation system is essential for autophagy in eukaryotes. Even though there are homologues in animals, this article mainly focuses on its role in lower eukaryotes such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Yoshinori Ohsumi is a Japanese cell biologist specializing in autophagy, the process that cells use to destroy and recycle cellular components. Ohsumi is a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology's Institute of Innovative Research. He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Sciences in 2012, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy.
Chaperone-assisted selective autophagy is a cellular process for the selective, ubiquitin-dependent degradation of chaperone-bound proteins in lysosomes.
Daniel H. Geschwind is an American physician-scientist whose laboratory has made pioneering discoveries in the biology of brain disorders and the genetic and genomic analyses of the nervous system. His laboratory showed that gene co-expression has a reproducible network structure that can be used to understand neurobiological mechanisms in health, evolution, and disease. He led the first studies to define the molecular pathology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and several other psychiatric disorders, and has made major contributions to defining the genetic basis of autism.
Felix Armin Randow is a German molecular immunologist and tenured group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Guided by the importance of cell-autonomous immunity as the sole defender of unicellular organisms, Randow has made contributions to the understanding of host-pathogen interactions. He is an EMBO member, a Wellcome Trust investigator and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Ana Maria Cuervo is a Spanish-American physician, researcher, and cell biologist. She is a professor in developmental and molecular biology, anatomy and structural biology, and medicine and co-director of the Institute for Aging Studies at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is best known for her research work on autophagy, the process by which cells recycle waste products, and its changes in aging and age-related diseases.
Professor Patrick Francis Chinnery, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedSci, is a neurologist, clinician scientist, and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow based in the Medical Research Council Mitochondrial Biology Unit and the University of Cambridge, where he is also professor of neurology and head of the department of clinical neurosciences.
Rubicon is a protein that in humans is encoded by the RUBCN gene. Rubicon is one of the few known negative regulators of autophagy, a cellular process that degrades unnecessary or damaged cellular components. Rubicon is recruited to its sites of action through interaction with the small GTPase Rab7, and impairs the autophagosome-lysosome fusion step of autophagy through inhibition of PI3KC3-C2.
AMBRA1 is a protein that is able to regulate cancer cells through autophagy. AMBRA1 is described as a mechanism cells use to divide and there is new evidence demonstrating the role and impact of AMBRA1 as a candidate for the treatment of several disorders and diseases, including anticancer therapy. It is known to suppress tumors and plays a role in mitophagy and apoptosis. AMBRA1 can be found in the cytoskeleton and mitochondria and during the process of autophagy, it is localized at the endoplasmic reticulum. In normal conditions, AMBRA1 is dormant and will bind to BCL2 in the outer membrane. This relocation enables autophagosome nucleation. AMBRA1 protein is involved in several cellular processes and is involved in the regulation of the immune system and nervous system.
J. Paul Taylor is an American physician scientist and research hospital director known for his contributions to the fields of neurogenetics, RNA biology, and neurological disease, including the role of biomolecular condensation in neurological diseases such as ALS.
Zhenyu Yue is a Chinese academic researcher in the field of neurology and neuroscience, who is the Alex and Shirley Aidekman Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. He is known for his discovery of genes controlling autophagy, autophagy functions in central nervous system, molecular mechanism of neurodegenerative diseases, and modelling neurological diseases using genetic mouse models.