Svetlana F. Khaiboullina, M.D., Ph.D
Position: Clinical Laboratory Supervisor, University of Nevada, Reno, School of Medicine, United States
Research area:
Infectious diseases, viral hemorrhagic fevers: prevention and treatment. Gene and cell therapy, neurodegenerative, autoimmune and infectious diseases. Chemical compounds screening for anti-cancer and anti-viral therapies
Expertise:
Cytokine and gene expression analysis. Genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. Work in the BSL3 level safety laboratory. Work with viruses in BSL2 and BSL3 level containment laboratories (hemorrhagic fever viruses, herpes viruses, etc); experimental model for autoimmune disease, tumor and transplantation.
Top 5 publications:
1. Valente AX, Oliveira PJ, Khaiboullina SF, Palotás A, Rizvanov AA. 2013. Biological insight, high-throughput datasets and the nature of neuro-degenerative disorders. Curr Drug Metab. 14:814-818.
2. Khaiboullina SF, Morzunov SP, Hall MR, De Meirleir KL, Rizvanov AA, Lombardi VC. 2013 Human dendritic cells transfected with a human papilloma virus-18 construct display decreased mobility and upregulated cytokine production. Int J Oncol. 43:1701-1709.
3. Lombardi VC, Khaiboullina SF. 2014. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells of the gut: Relevance to immunity and pathology. Clin Immunol. 153:165-177.
4. Khaiboullina SF, Martynova EV, Khamidullina ZL, Lapteva EV, Nikolaeva IV, Anokhin VV, Lombardi VC, Rizvanov AA. 2014. Upregulation of IFN-γ and IL-12 is associated with a milder form of hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis. 33:2149-56.
5. Khaiboullina SF, DeMeirleir KL, Rawat S, Berk GS, Gaynor-Berk RS, Mijatovic T, Blatt N, Rizvanov AA, Young SG, Lombardi VC. 2014. Cytokine expression provides clues to the pathophysiology of Gulf War illness and myalgic encephalomyelitis. Cytokine. 72:1-8.
Paulo J. Oliveira
Position: Principal Investigator “MitoXT – Mitochondrial Toxicology and Experimental Therapeutics Laboratory”; Director, “XCell-Toxicos: Predictive Toxicology” Service;
Head, “Mitochondrial, Metabolism and Disease” Core Group at CNC, Portugal
Research area:
Mitochondrial Biology and Toxicology; Cancer and stem cell metabolism.
Expertise:
Evaluation of mitochondrial activity, oxidative stress and signaling pathways; prediction of compound toxicity based on mitochondrial effects in intact cells and isolated fractions.
Top 5 publications:
1. Ignacio Vega-Naredo, Rute Loureiro, Katia A. Mesquita, Ines A. Barbosa, Ludgero C. Tavares, Ana F. Branco, Jenna R. Erickson, Jon Holy, Edward L. Perkins, Rui A. Carvalho, Paulo J. Oliveira (2014) Mitochondrial Metabolism Directs Stemness and Cell Differentiation in P19 Embryonal Carcinoma Stem Cells. Cell Death Difer. 21(10):1560-74.
2. Filipa S. Carvalho, Ana Burgeiro, Rita Garcia, António J. Moreno, Rui A. Carvalho, Paulo J. Oliveira (2013) Doxorubicin-Induced Cardiotoxicity: From Molecular Trigger(s) to Cardiomyopathy. Medic. Res. Rev. 34(1):106-35.
3. João P. Monteiro, Elisabete Maciel, Francisco Peixoto, Maria R. Domingues, Amália S. Jurado, Paulo J. Oliveira (2013) Rapeseed Oil-rich Diet Alters Hepatic Mitochondrial Membrane Lipid Composition and Disrupts Bioenergetics. Arch. Toxicol., 87 (12): 2151-2163.
4. Ines Marques-Aleixo, Paulo J. Oliveira, Paula I. Moreira, José Magalhães, António Ascensão (2012). Physical Exercise as a Possible Strategy for Brain Protection: Evidence from Mitochondrial-mediated Mechanisms. Prog. Neurobiol. 99(2):149-162.
5. Gonçalo C. Pereira, Susana P. Pereira, Claudia V. Pereira, José A. Lumini, José Magalhães, António Ascensão, Maria S. Santos, António J. Moreno, Paulo J. Oliveira (2012) Mitochondrionopathy Phenotype in Doxorubicin-Treated Wistar Rats Depends on Treatment Protocol and is Cardiac-specific. PLOS One 7 (6): e38867.
Saverio Bellusci
Position: Professor, Chair of Extracellular Matrix Remodelling. Excellence Cluster Cardio-Pulmonary System. Justus Liebig University, Germany
Research area:
Developmental Biology and stem cells. Lung development and disease (Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Broncho-pulmonary dysplasia)
Expertise:
Phenotypic analysis of mutant embryos with all the techniques attached to this (in situ hybridization for gene expression, organotypic culture, proliferation and apoptosis, etc..). Genetically modified mouse (transgenic and knock out). Complex allele breeding (double condtional ko with reporter and Cre line). Expert on Fibroblast Growth factor signaling.
Top 5 publications:
1. Bellusci, S., Grindley, J., Emoto, H., Itoh, N. and Hogan, B.L.M. (1997) Fibroblast growth factor 10 (FGF10) and branching morphogenesis in the embryonic mouse lung. Development 124, 4867-4878.
2. Mailleux, A. A., Kelly, R. G., Veltmaat, J. M., De Langhe, S. P., Zaffran, S., Thiery, J. P. and Bellusci, S. (2005). Fgf10 expression identifies parabronchial smooth muscle cell progenitors and is required for their entry into the smooth muscle cell lineage. Development 132: 2157-2166.
3. Gupte, V.V., Ramasamy, S.K., Reddy, R., Lee, J., Weinreb P. H., Violette S. M., Guenther A., Warburton, D., Driscoll, B., Minoo, P. and Bellusci, S. (2009) Overexpression of Fibroblast Growth Factor 10 (FGF10) both during the inflammatory and the fibrotic phases attenuates bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis in mice. AJRCCM 180(5):424-36.
4. Tiozzo, C., Carraro, G., Al Alam, D., Baptista, S., Danopoulos, S., Li, A., Lavarreda-Pearce, M., Li, C., De Langhe, S., Chan, B., Borok, Z., Bellusci, S.#, and Minoo, P#. (2012) Mesodermal Deletion of Pten leads to Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia-like phenotype. Journal of Clinical Investigation, pii: 61334. 10.1172/JCI61334 (#: equal contribution).
5. El Agha, E., Herold, S. Al Alam, D., Quantius, J., MacKenzie, B., Carraro, C., Minoo, P., Seeger, W., and Bellusci, S. (2014) Fgf10-positive cells represent a multipotent progenitor cell population during lung development and postnatally. Development 141(2):296-306.
Seyed Shahriar Arab
Position: Assistant Professor, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran
Research area:
Structural bioinformatics, Protein structure prediction, Protein engineering, Protein design, Peptide design, Gene regulatory network analysis.
Expertise:
Protein engineering. Chimeric protein design. Antibody optimization, Enhance protein stability.
Top 5 publications:
1. Fahimeh Ghavamipour, S. Shirin Shahangian, Reza H. Sajedi, S. Shahriar Arab, Kamran Mansouri and Mahmoud Reza Aghamaali (2014) Development of a highly-potent anti-angiogenic VEGF8–109 heterodimer by directed blocking of its VEGFR-2 binding site. FEBS Journal , 281(19):4479-94.
2. Mohammad Mehdi Ghahremanpour, Seyed Shahriar Arab, Saman Biook Aghazadeh, Jin Zhang and David van der Spoel (2013) MemBuilder: A Web-Based Graphical Interface to Build Heterogeneously Mixed Membrane Bilayers for the GROMACS Biomolecular Simulation Program. Bioinformatics, Vol. 30, No. 3 (439-441).
3. Behnam Neyshabur, Ahmadreza Khadem, Somaye Hashemifar, Seyed Shahriar Arab (2013) NETAL: A new graph-based method for global alignment of protein-protein interaction networks. Bioinformatics 1:9.
4. Arab S, Sadeghi M, Eslahchi C, Pezeshk H. A (2010) A pairwise residue contact area-based mean force potential for discrimination of native protein structure. BMC Bioinformatics, 11:16.
5. Hossein Naderi-Manesh, Mehdi Sadeghi, Seyed Shahriar Arab, and Ali A.Moosavi Movahed. (2001) Prediction of Protein Surface Accessibility with Information Theory. PROTEINS: Structure, Function, and Genetics 42: 452 – 459.