Tibor Kristian, PhD
Faculty Profile
Overview
Research activity in my lab can be divided into two major projects: 1) the role of cell-type-specific mitochondrial dynamics in acute brain injury; (2) disturbed NAD+ metabolism and its contribution to the cell death mechanism in neurodegenerative disease. Our recent studies, which utilize transgenic animals expressing cell-type specific mitochondria-targeted fluorescent markers in the brain, show that mitochondria in neurons and astrocytes differentially respond to stress conditions.
We first reported that the mitochondria in cells destined to die cannot re-fuse and regain their pre-insult morphology and functions (Owens et al. 2015) and that both neuronal and astrocytic mitochondria are damaged by excitotoxic insult during ischemic conditions.
It is well established that massive degradation of NAD+ can significantly compromise cell survival. Recently, we reported that administering nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), a precursor for NAD+ synthesis, inhibits NAD+ degradation and dramatically protects against ischemic brain injury (Park et al. 2016).
We recently revealed that NMN affects several downstream targets that promote the survival of brain cells following pathologic stress (Klimova et al. 2019). We are now characterizing the mechanism of NM neuroprotection by determining the post-translational modifications of proteins controlling mitochondrial dynamics (Klimova et al. 2020).
Meet the Team
Tibor Kristian, PhD
Principal Investigator/Professor
RNDR: University of P.J. Safarik, Slovakia
PhD: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia
Interest: Neurodegeneration, mitochondrial and cellular bioenergetics
Publications
Please see Dr. Kristian's faculty profile for a complete list of his publications.
You can also see his publications on PubMed.
Contact:
Phone: (410) 706-3418
Email: tkristian@som.umaryland.edu