Koroush Shahpasand Ph.D.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Assistant professor
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:
- 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]
- “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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.