Ratnesh Lal
Professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, Material Science & Engineering
Co-Director of Center for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering
University of California, San Diego
Seminar Information
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most devastating and the most studied misfolded protein disease. In spite of more than thirty years of extensive global efforts and billions of dollars investment, there is no treatment or preventive measure. Misfolding of proteins yields insoluble globular and fibrillar amyloids which are linked to degenerative AD, Parkinson, ALS, prion diseases, Type-II diabetes and other systemic diseases. Almost all major misfolded protein diseases have one thing in common: interaction of amyloids with cellular membranes for their toxic effects. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and various complementary techniques, inclduing molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, channel conductance measurements, neuritic degeneration and cell death assays, we have shown that at least 12 different amyloid peptides related to various protein misfolding diseases form toxic amyloid ion channels. These toxic ion channels are at the core of amyloid pathology. Based upon the structure of amyloid ion channels obtained from AFM studies, international collaborators have developed amyloid channel blockers which reverse memory loss in animal and fly models and is currently undergoing clinical trial in Europe. My talk will describe 25 years of interdisciplinary and collaborative work which enabled the new amyloid channel blocker under clinical trial with the real hope for a viable memory saver.
Lal is a professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, Material Science & Engineering, and Co-Director of Center for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering at UC San Diego. He received his MS and Masters of Philosophy in Physics and Biophysics from JNU in New Delhi and his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama. After postdoctoral training at Caltech, he was a faculty member at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Before accepting his current position at UC San Diego, he was a professor and the director of the newly established Center of Nanomedicine at the University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of AAAS (the American Association for Advancement of Science) and a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He was a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute for Applied Physics, Shanghai, the UTS Invited Professor in Sydney for the Bionanotechnology initiative and a New Zealand Government International Science Scholar. Professor Lal is an Associate Editor of the Journal Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, Medicine. He is the Chairman of biotech startups Vessel ANI, Inc, Ampera Life, Inc and is on advisory board of RC Nano LLC and Be Green Packaging LLC. Professor Lal served on the NIH Nano study section. Professor Lal is an authority on biomedical applications of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and nanoscale imaging of complex biological systems and develops nanotechnologies for and multi-scale biophysical and system biology studies of channels and receptors and for personalized global health. In addition to seminal research publications in the field of nanomedicine, he holds several patents based upon AFM cantilever arrays, microfluidics, optoelectronics and nanomaterials for medical diagnostics and medical nanodevices, nanoscale fluid behavior and new TIRF, FRET and related optical microscopy.