Dr Ksenia Kurbatskaya joined Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton in November 2016 as a Research Fellow in Neurodegeneration. Dr Kurbatskaya primarily focuses on Alzheimer’s disease neuroscience research and is involved in the development of ex vivo and in vitro human models of neurodegenerative disease.

My role as researcher is to investigate mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease in human brain cells, used here as a research model that enables direct translation of findings to clinical studies and drug development. In particular, I will investigate how the protein calpain contributes to synaptic damage, which is observed in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and causes memory loss in patients. Calpain is activated upon abnormal changes in neural calcium levels and may further exacerbate these calcium changes and trigger other pathological mechanisms to result in impairment of synapses in Alzheimer’s. By studying calpain in live human brain cells and testing the protective properties of clinically-relevant calpain-blocking agents, I aim to confirm calpain as an effective potential therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s drug trials.