Alexei Verkhratsky

Alexei Verkhratsky, (Ukrainian: Олексій Верхратський, Russian: Алексей Верхратский) sometimes spelled Alexej, is a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Manchester best known for his research on the physiology and pathophysiology of neuroglia, calcium signalling, and brain ageing. He is an elected member and vice-president of Academia Europaea, of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia (Spain), of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, of Polish Academy of Sciences, and Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, among others. Since 2010, he is a Ikerbasque Research Professor and from 2012 he is deputy director of the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience in Bilbao. He is a distinguished professor at Jinan University, China Medical University of Shenyang, and Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and is an editor-in-chief of Cell Calcium, receiving editor for Cell Death and Disease, and Acta Physiologica and member of editorial board of many academic journals.

Verkhratsky further extended the concept of astroglial excitability as "ionic" excitability mediated by major ions, which create ionic signals coordinated in space and time; these ionic signals control the activity of astroglial homeostatic cascades and link neuronal firing and synaptic transmission to astrocyte functional responses. The development of this concept begun from the very first recordings of astroglial Na signals in response to physiological stimulation in situ in cerebellar Bergmann radial astrocytes. Subsequently, Verkhratsky analysed astroglial Na dynamics associated with the activity of glial glutamate transporters that are critical for glutamate clearance and glutamatergic transmission. Verkhratsky found that activation of glial transporters either by exogenous glutamate or by activation of glutamatergic transmission results in large Na influx which generate substantial and long-lasting [Na+]i transients in processes of astrocytes. Based on these observations, he proposed a new concept astroglial Na signalling. The concept of astroglial ionic excitability was further integrated in the theory of homeostatic astroglia and is closely associated with the definition of an astroglial cradle, developed with Maiken Nedergaard, that assigns to perisynaptic astrocytic processes a role of multifunctional compartment, which controls emergence, maturation, maintenance, performance and demise of synapses in the central nervous system. In a series of highly cited conceptual reviews he outlined basic principles of glial physiology and pathophysiology, which significantly influenced this rapidly developing area of neuroscience. Working with Arthur Butt, Verkhratsky published two textbooks on physiology and pathophysiology of neuroglia in 2007 and 2013 and have been the only didactic writings on neuroglia.

In the Ukraine, he was concurrently the deputy director of the International Center of Molecular Physiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and head of the Research Group of Cellular Neuroscience, Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology. He returned to Germany in 1995 as a senior research scientist at the Department of Cellular Neuroscience in the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. Moving to the UK in 1999, he has held multiple positions at the University of Manchester including senior lecturer, reader, professor and chairman in the School of Biological Sciences.

Verkhratsky conducted the first recordings of Ca currents in aged sensory neurones in 1993. He subsequently pioneered cytosolic Ca recordings in aged neurones in situ, which gave direct experimental support for multiple aspects of a "Ca theory of ageing". Verkhratsky was the first to perform an in depth analysis of astrocytic structure and function in the ageing brain. He has demonstrated regional differences in astroglial morphological appearances, which ranged from cytoskeleton hypertrophy to cytoskeleton atrophy. He also found that large populations of astrocytes negative to classical marker GFAP but positive to glutamine synthetase or S100B protein do not show hypertrophic changes in the aged brain thus suggesting that brain senescence is not associated with widespread astrogliosis. He also performed first detailed analysis of functional properties of glutamate transporters, glutamate and purinoceptors in old astrocytes in situ and found that brain ageing is associated with significant decrease in the density of these signalling molecules.

In 1990, Verkhratsky discovered functional expression of low- and high-threshold Ca channels in oligodendroglial precursors, this is the earliest finding underlying the concept of electrical excitability of NG2-glia. When working in Berlin at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular medicine Verkhratsky Verkhratsky and Kettenmann performed numerous seminal observation of intracellular Ca signalling and defined the concept of glial Ca excitability. He was the first to demonstrate in situ functional expression of metabotropic purinoceptors linked to InsP3-induced Ca release in oligodendroglia and in cerebellar Bergmann astrocytes.

After completing his PhD, Alexei worked as a research scientist at the Department of General Physiology of the Nervous System, Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology for several years. In 1989, he went to Heidelberg University in the laboratory of Helmut Kettenmann, who introduced Alexei to neuroglial research. Alexei also was a guest scientist at the Research Group of Cellular Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the Department of Cellular Neuroscience of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

Alexei graduated from the Kyiv Medical Institute in 1983. Staying in Kyiv, he obtained a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Platon Kostyuk from the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology in 1986 and he received a D.Sc. from the same Institute in 1993.