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| Our Team | |
Vassilis Koliatsos, M.D.
Email Address: koliat@jhmi.edu My main interest is mechanisms of traumatic and degenerative brain injury and repair. I have taken a pathophysiological approach to these problems, i.e. viewing pathology as an inappropriate – misplaced or excessive – version of a physiological process. For example, programmed cell death is a pivotal developmental mechanism for organism and organ formation, but excessive cell death signaling can cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). In a series of papers in the early and mid-90s, work in the lab characterized a number of neurotrophic peptides for key populations of neurons in the brain and spinal cord. We also demonstrated the role of programmed cell death in an index neurodegenerative disorder, i.e. Huntington’s disease. I have recently turned my attention to cellular therapies for degenerative and traumatic diseases of the nervous system, i.e. applications involving embryonic and neural stem cells. We have worked on several lines of neural stem cells and have recently published pivotal studies showing efficacy of stem cell grafts in animal models of ALS. Although a lot of my previous work has focused on the more accessible peripheral motor system, I am now working to apply some of the lessons from this research to neocortical and limbic circuits implicated in memory and complex behaviors. To this effect, I have begun to characterize the role of small GABAergic cortical interneurons that serve as sensors of injury and may be actively engaged in both scavenging injured pyramidal neurons and laying the groundwork for ongoing cueing of neurons that emerge from existing neurogenic niches of the adult brain. Literature Citations Yan J, Welsh AM, Xu L, Johe K and Koliatsos VE: Large-scale survival, differentiation and structural integration of human neural stem cells grafted into the adult rat spinal cord. PLoS Medicine 4(2), 2007: e39 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040039 Yan J, Xu L, Welsh AM, Chen D, Hazel T, Johe K, and Koliatsos VE: Combined Immunosuppressive Agents or CD4 Antibodies Prolong Survival of Human Neural Stem Cell Grafts and Improve Disease Outcomes in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Transgenic Mice. Stem Cells 24:1976-1985, 2006. Xu L, Yan J, Chen D, Welsh AM, Hazel T, Johe K, Hatfield G, and Koliatsos VE: Human Neural Stem Cell Grafts Ameliorate Motor Neuron Disease in SOD-1 Transgenic Rats. Transplantation 82:865-875, 2006. Nasonkin IO, Koliatsos VE: Nonhuman sialic acid Neu5Gc is very low in human embryonic stem cell-derived neural precursors differentiated with B27/N2 and noggin: Implications for transplantation. Exp. Neurology 201:525-529, 2006. Koliatsos,VE, Kecojevic,A, Troncoso,JC, Gastard,MC, Bennett,DA, Schneider,JA: Early involvement of small inhibitory cortical interneurons in Alzheimer's disease. Acta Neuropathologica 112:147-162, 2006. Zhou Y, Zhou L, Chen H and Koliatsos VE: An AMPA glutamatergic receptor activation-nitric oxide synthesis step signals transsynaptic apoptosis in limbic cortex. Neuropharmacology 51(1):67-76, 2006. Koliatsos VE, Dawson TM, Kecojevic A, Zhou Y, Wang Y-F, and Huang K-X: Cortical interneurons become activated by deafferentation and instruct the apoptosis of pyramidal neurons. PNAS 101:14264-14269, 2004.
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