Rate My Professor Ali Khoshnan

Khoshnan's laboratory employs human neurons, brain organoids, mouse, and Drosophila models to delineate pathogenic assemblies of mutant huntingtin, their propagation mechanisms, and neuronal pathways driving neurodegeneration. Efforts focus on engineering antibodies and nanobodies against pathogenic huntingtin conformations for diagnostic and therapeutic uses, alongside probing microbiota-gut-brain axis influences on Huntington's disease progression, including huntingtin's regulation of gut microbial homeostasis and pertinent gut-brain circuits. His contributions include pioneering therapeutic and diagnostic intrabodies, elucidating neuroinflammatory signaling pathways, generating antibodies targeting toxic huntingtin conformations, and uncovering prion-like amplification of neurotoxic species. He is a member of the Huntington's Disease Society of America Scientific Advisory Board. Select publications encompass "Gut Microbiota as a Modifier of Huntington’s Disease Pathogenesis" (Journal of Huntingtonton's Disease, 2024), "Epitope-specific antibodies can distinguish between soluble huntingtin exon-1 and its diverse cellular aggregates" (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2026), "Amplification of neurotoxic HTTex1 assemblies in human neurons" (Neurobiology of Disease, 2021), "IKK phosphorylates Huntingtin and targets it for degradation by the proteasome and lysosome" (Journal of Cell Biology, 2009), and "Activation of the IκB kinase complex and nuclear factor-κB contributes to mutant huntingtin neurotoxicity" (Journal of Neuroscience, 2004).