Alexei Verkhratsky

Alexei Verkhratsky, (, ) sometimes spelled Alexej, is a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Manchester best known for his research on the physiology and pathophysiology of neuroglia, calcium signalling, and brain ageing. He is an elected member and vice-president of Academia Europaea, of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia (Spain), of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, of Polish Academy of Sciences, and Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, among others. Since 2010, he is a Ikerbasque Research Professor and from 2012 he is deputy director of the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience in Bilbao. He is a distinguished professor at Jinan University, China Medical University of Shenyang, and Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and is an editor-in-chief of Cell Calcium, receiving editor for Cell Death and Disease, and Acta Physiologica and member of editorial board of many academic journals.

Family Alexei is married to Irina Verkhratska and has a daughter, Dina. His father is Nestor Verkhratsky (Верхратський Нестoр Сергійович), a gerontologist who headed a laboratory at the Institute of Gerontology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His mother is Nina Verzykosvka (Вержиковська Ніна Василівна), who was a head of department at the same Institute. His grandfather is Sergey Verkhratsky (Верхратський Сергій Авраaмович) who was head of the Department of Surgery in Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University, a renowned historian of medicine, and a decorated veteran of both World Wars having received the Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Star, and Order of the Patriotic War. His grandmother was Dina Shirman-Verkhratska (Ширман-Верхратська Діна Алексеевна), a well known gynaecologist.

Education Alexei graduated from the Kyiv Medical Institute in 1983. Staying in Kyiv, he obtained a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Platon Kostyuk from the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology in 1986 and he received a D.Sc. from the same Institute in 1993.

Career After completing his PhD, Alexei worked as a research scientist at the Department of General Physiology of the Nervous System, Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology for several years. In 1989, he went to Heidelberg University in the laboratory of Helmut Kettenmann, who introduced Alexei to neuroglial research. Alexei also was a guest scientist at the Research Group of Cellular Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the Department of Cellular Neuroscience of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

In Ukraine, he was concurrently the deputy director of the International Center of Molecular Physiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and head of the Research Group of Cellular Neuroscience, Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology. He returned to Germany in 1995 as a senior research scientist at the Department of Cellular Neuroscience in the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. Moving to the UK in 1999, he has held multiple positions at the University of Manchester including senior lecturer, reader, professor and chairman in the School of Biological Sciences.

Research Glial physiology

Verkhratsky further extended the concept of astroglial excitability as "ionic" excitability mediated by major ions, which create ionic signals coordinated in space and time; these ionic signals control the activity of astroglial homeostatic cascades and link neuronal firing and synaptic transmission to astrocyte functional responses. The development of this concept begun from the very first recordings of astroglial Na+ signals in response to physiological stimulation in situ in cerebellar Bergmann radial astrocytes. Subsequently, Verkhratsky analysed astroglial Na+ dynamics associated with the activity of glial glutamate transporters that are critical for glutamate clearance and glutamatergic transmission. Verkhratsky found that activation of glial transporters either by exogenous glutamate or by activation of glutamatergic transmission results in large Na+ influx which generate substantial and long-lasting [Na+]i transients in processes of astrocytes. Based on these observations, he proposed a new concept astroglial Na+ signalling. The concept of astroglial ionic excitability was further integrated in the theory of homeostatic astroglia and is closely associated with the definition of an astroglial cradle, developed with Maiken Nedergaard, that assigns to perisynaptic astrocytic processes a role of multifunctional compartment, which controls emergence, maturation, maintenance, performance and demise of synapses in the central nervous system. In a series of highly cited conceptual reviews he outlined basic principles of glial physiology and pathophysiology, which significantly influenced this rapidly developing area of neuroscience. Working with Arthur Butt, Verkhratsky published two textbooks on physiology and pathophysiology of neuroglia in 2007 and 2013 and have been the only didactic writings on neuroglia.

Cellular mechanisms of brain ageing Verkhratsky conducted the first recordings of Ca2+ currents in aged sensory neurones in 1993. He subsequently pioneered cytosolic Ca2+ recordings in aged neurones in situ, which gave direct experimental support for multiple aspects of a "Ca2+ theory of ageing". Verkhratsky was the first to perform an in depth analysis of astrocytic structure and function in the ageing brain. He has demonstrated regional differences in astroglial morphological appearances, which ranged from cytoskeleton hypertrophy to cytoskeleton atrophy. He also found that large populations of astrocytes negative to classical marker GFAP but positive to glutamine synthetase or S100B protein do not show hypertrophic changes in the aged brain thus suggesting that brain senescence is not associated with widespread astrogliosis. He also performed first detailed analysis of functional properties of glutamate transporters, glutamate and purinoceptors in old astrocytes in situ and found that brain ageing is associated with significant decrease in the density of these signalling molecules.

Glial pathophysiology Verkhratsky has developed a new concept of astroglial atrophy associated with the loss of function and glial paralysis as key elements of neuropathology; astroglial atrophy contributes to pathophysiology of several neurological diseases from neuropsychiatric disorders to neurodegeneration. First, in collaboration with Rodriguez, he discovered prominent inhibition of neurogenesis (linked to the radial astrocytes-neural stem cells) in the animal model of Alzheimer's disease. Subsequently, he discovered morphological and functional evidence for astroglial atrophy at the early stages of AD that preceded the appearance of the typical neuronal histopathology in animal models; these observations have been subsequently corroborated in experiments on astrocytes differentiated from pluripotent stem cells obtained from patients with clinically confirmed Alzheimer's disease in both familial and sporadic forms. He demonstrated deficient astrogliosis (indicative of functional atrophy) in the brain regions most vulnerable to Alzheimer-like pathology; these deficits in astroglial protection can be associated with brain region-specific alterations of the Ca2+ signalling toolkit. He also found that environmental stimulation (enriched environment and physical stimulation) restored AD associated glial abnormalities.

Physiology of neurones

Honours and awards 2019: Member, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts 2019: Honorary professor, China Medical University, Shenyang 2018: Member, Polish Academy of Sciences 2018: Distinguished professor, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine 2018: Distinguished professor, Jinan University, Guangzhou 2017: Honorary professor, Department of Physiology, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey 2016: Copernicus Gold Medal and Copernicus visiting professor, University of Ferrara 2013: Dozor Visiting Scholar Award, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel 2013: Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 2013: Member, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2012: Member, Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives 2012: Member, Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia 2003: Member, Academia Europaea

Editorial commitments Editor in chief, Cell Calcium Receiving editor, Acta Physiologica (Oxford, England) Editorial board, Cell Death and Disease Series editor, Colloquium Series on Neuroglia in Biology and Medicine: From Physiology to Disease, editor of 8 books

Selected publications