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University of Cambridge Institute for Medical Research

	David Rubinsztein

	David Rubinsztein has MB ChB, BSc(Med) Hons and PhD degress from the University of Cape Town. He came to Cambridge in 1993 as a senior registrar in Genetic Pathology. During this period, he started working on Huntington's disease and developed an independent research group. In 1997, he acquired his Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training and was awarded a 6-year Glaxo Wellcome Fellowship. In 2001 he was awarded an MRC Programme grant with Prof Steve Brown to identify and analyse modifier genes in Huntington's disease and a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship to further understand the biology of diseases caused by codon reiteration mutations. David Rubinsztein was appointed to a personal readership at the University of Cambridge in 2003 and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004. In 2005 he was promoted to Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge (personal chair). His research, which is based in the Department of Medical Genetics in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, is focused on trying to understand the processes underlying the pathology in Huntington's disease and related conditions associated with intracellular aggregates. He is trying to use the understanding of the pathobiology of these diseases to develop therapeutic strategies and has a particular interest in autophagy in this context. His group use a range of approaches to address these aims, from cell biology to fly and mouse models. Recent publications B Ravikumar, A Acevedo-Arozena, S Imarisio, Z Berger, C Vacher, CJ O'Kane, SDM Brown and DC Rubinsztein. Dynein mutations impair autophagic clearance of aggregate-prone proteins. Nature Genetics (2005) 37:771-776. JE Davies, L Wang, L Garcia-Oroz, LJ Cook, C Vacher, DG O'Donovan and DC Rubinsztein. Doxycycline attenuates and delays toxicity of the oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy mutation in transgenic mice. Nature Medicine (2005) 6:672-677. S Luo, C Vacher, JE Davies and DC Rubinsztein. Cdk5 phosphorylation of huntingtin reduces its cleavage by caspases: implications for mutant huntingtin toxicity. Journal of Cell Biology (2005) 169:647-656. S Sarkar, RA Floto, Z Berger, S Imarisio, A Cordenier, M Pasco, LJ Cook and DC Rubinsztein. Lithium induces autophagy by inhibiting inositol monophosphatase. Journal of Cell Biology (2005) 170: 1101-1111. B Ravikumar, C Vacher, Z Berger, JE Davies, S Luo, LG Oroz, F Scaravilli, DF Easton, R Duden, CJ O'Kane, and DC Rubinsztein. mTOR inhibition induces autophagy and reduces toxicity of the Huntington's disease mutation in Drosophila and mouse models. Nature Genetics (2004) 36: 585-595. Contact Details Professor David C. Rubinsztein University of Cambridge Department of Medical Genetics Cambridge Institute for Medical Research Wellcome Trust/MRC Building Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2XY, UK Phone: (44) 1223 762608 Fax: (44) 1223 331206 e-mail: dcr1000@hermes.cam.ac.uk Back to University of Cambridge