Harish C. Pant | Editor
Affilation: Agra University, India
I became independent investigator in 1995 and senior principal investigator of Cytoskeletal Protein Regulation Laboratory of Neurochemistry, National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 in 2000. I provided the mechanism of electron and ion transport in model membrane systems on the basis of the formation of charge transfer complexes as conductive device in the membrane. In the squid giant axon system, I showed that the phosphorylation of cytoskeletal proteins is tightly and topographically regulated and selectively occurs in the axonal but not cell body compartment under physiological state, however, upon neuronal insults I have shown that it is deregulated; kinases are hyperactivated and cytoskeletal proteins are aberrantly hyperphosphorylated and induces pathology. I have identified and characterized several kinases, phosphatases and their co-factors responsible for the tightly regulated process. During these studies I discovered a neuronal cell cycle like kinase now known as Cdk5 and small twenty four amino acid peptide, (TFP5), from the activator of neuronal cell cycle like kinase (Cdk5), p35, drastically reduced the pathological symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s diseases and ALS without toxicity. A number of news media have noted the discovery of TFP5 as a therapeutic compound for AD
