Koroush Shahpasand Ph.D.

Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Assistant professor

Email:

Phone: +98 21 23562512

CV:

I have a long-term and intensive interest in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and some other neurodegenerative disorders. I have been working on the elucidation of p-tau conformations in the development and treatment of tauopathies.

Tau hyperphosphorylation is an early event in AD that precedes tangle formation and neurodegeneration. My ex-lab in Harvard Medical School has developed innovative antibody technology to generate conformation specific monoclonal antibodies, which allowed us to identify the very early pathogenic p-tau conformation leading to tauopathy in Traumatic Brain Injury. Using various techniques, we discovered that the monoclonal antibody not only could recognize the early pathogenic p-tau, but also is effective on blocking neurodegeneration in cell model systems and in mouse models of TBI.

My current group has focused on cistauosis in various neurological disorders as well as molecular mechanisms of neural cell death.

In particular, we are exploring tauopathy molecular mechanisms upon AD, Parkinson’s disease, Bipolar disorder, Multiple sclerosis, Diabetes Mellitus, Macular Degeneration, Spinal Cord Injury and etc. We are also interested in finding the actual reason of p-tau neurotoxicity as well as genes mediating neurodegeneration.

We are trying to design an early AD diagnosis kit. Also, we are considering antagomirs; suppressing Pin1 inhibiting miRNAs.

We have received several domestic and international grants from Alzheimer’s Association at Chicago, Brain Protein Aging Program at Nagoya, Japan and etc.

MSc Students:

Zahra Amiri

To study Pin1 gene expression level upon cistauosis

Roghayeh Naserkhaki

To study cistauosis in Bipolar disorder

Nasrin Fazli

To study nuclear membrane integrity upon cistauosis

Ghazaleh Mobayyen

To study cistauosis upon Multiple Sclerosis

Nastaran Samimi

To study autophagy and tauopathy causative link

PhD Students:

Fatemeh Hadi

To study pThr231-tau contribution in Parkinson’s disease in the in vitro and in vivo systems

Shaghayegh Roghanian

To study nuclear factors interacting with pathogenic cis pT231-tau

Mahsa Pourhamzeh

To study Tauopathy and Amyloidopathy causative link

Azadeh Amini

To study antibody delivery employing stem cells derived micro-vesicles

Aysan Farhadi

To study cistauosis upon Diabetes Mellitus

Sahba Shahbazi

To exaine if AD is genetic or environmental

Ghazaleh Goudarzi

To study cytoplasmic factors playing part in cis p-tau translocation

Morteza Abyadeh

To examine neural phosphor-proteom upon cistauosis

Nahid Tofigh

To explore if cis or trans p-tau is more neurotoxic upon Alzheimer’s diseae

Fatemeh Jahansooz

To study drug delivery into CNS upon Parkinson’s disease employing nanoparticles

Research assistants:

Shirin Khajeh

Cis & trans antibody production

Selected Publications:

  1. Mohammadi A, Maleki-Jamshid A, Sanooghi D, Milan PB, Rahmani A, Sefat F, Shahpasand K, Soleimani M, Bakhtiari M, Belali R, Faghihi F, Joghataei MT, Perry G, Mozafari M. Mol Neurobiol. 2018 Mar 16. doi: 10.1007/s12035-018-0968-1. [Epub ahead of print]
  2. “Tau immunotherapy: Hopes and hindrances”. Shahpasand K, Sepehri Shamloo A, Nabavi SM, Ping Lu K, Zhen Zhou X. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2018 Feb 1;14(2):277-284. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2017.1393594. Epub 2017 Dec 1.
  3. Antibody against early driver of neurodegeneration cis P-tau blocks brain injury and tauopathy. Kondo A, Shahpasand K, Mannix R, Qiu J, Moncaster J, Chen CH, Yao Y, Lin YM, Driver JA, Sun Y, Wei S, Luo ML, Albayram O, Huang P, Rotenberg A, Ryo A, Goldstein LE, Pascual-Leone A, McKee AC, Meehan W, Zhou XZ, Lu KP. Nature. 2015 Jul 23;523(7561):431-436. doi: 10.1038/nature14658. Epub 2015 Jul 15.
  4. Pin1 cysteine-113 oxidation inhibits its catalytic activity and cellular function in Alzheimer’s disease.Chen CH, Li W, Sultana R, You MH, Kondo A, Shahpasand K, Kim BM, Luo ML, Nechama M, Lin YM, Yao Y, Lee TH, Zhou XZ, Swomley AM, Allan Butterfield D, Zhang Y, Lu KP. Neurobiol Dis. 2015 Apr;76:13-23. doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2014.12.027. Epub 2015 Jan 6.
  5. Regulation of mitochondrial transport and inter-microtubule spacing by tau phosphorylation at the sites hyperphosphorylated in Alzheimer’s disease. Shahpasand K, Uemura I, Saito T, Asano T, Hata K, Shibata K, Toyoshima Y, Hasegawa M, Hisanaga S. J Neurosci. 2012 Feb 15;32(7):2430-41. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5927-11.2012.
  6. A possible mechanism for controlling processive transport by microtubule-associated proteins. Shahpasand K, Ahmadian S, Riazi GH. Neurosci Res. 2008 Aug;61(4):347-50. doi: 10.1016/j.neures.2008.04.010. Epub 2008 May 2. Review.