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Hire Dr. Ashaq Hussain N.

India

USD 15 /hr

I am a stem cell-enthusiast with demonstrated experience in stem cell-based modeling of neurodegenerative diseases.

Profile Summary

I have a Ph.D. in neurobiology jointly from Jamia Hamdard and National Centre for Biological Sciences, India and subsequently worked as a postdoc . I am passionate about exploring role/s of various genetic, molecular or cellular processes in the development/progression or mitigation of neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative diseases, especially using human iPSC models. I have extensively worked with different types of human stem cells in my Ph.D. in the context of serotonin biology and Alzheimer’s disease and, hence, have demonstrated expertise in the stem cell field. I am a recipient of two national level (Indian) research fellowships. I joined a molecular neurobiology lab at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru initially as a graduate trainee and established neural stem cell cultures from embryonic and adult mice brain and then from mouse embryonic stem cells using adherent and neurosphere approaches. Later as a Ph.D. in the same lab, I generated highly-reproducible NSC cultures from human pluripotent stem cells including human ESCs and iPSCs using lineage-specific growth factors. The aim was to characterize these NSCs (as multipotent stem cells that could be differentiated into neurons and glia) and use them as a reductionist model system to study serotonin and other related components at the cellular level. To my knowledge, we are the first to have established the presence of serotonin in human PSC-derived NSCs. I also explored how exogenous serotonin affected mitochondrial function and ROS content in these cells. Alongside my Ph.D. project, I also generated patient-specific iPSC and NSCs from PBMNC-derived lymphoblastoid cell lines of Alzheimer’s Disease patients (Najar and Sneha et al., 2019). These NSCs were used to model mitochondrial dysfunction in AD in the background of APOE genotype (APOE3,4) (manuscript in preparation). I also contributed to the work which resulted in the generation of three iPSC lines from spinocerebellar ataxia type-12 patients (Kumar et al., 2018). In addition, I tried to directly reprogram LCLs into NSCs using different cocktails of episomal factors. During my postdoc at at NCBS, TIFR, I used CRISPRi strategy (dCas9-KRAB) to inactivate/repress the LCR locus of integrated HPV-18 fragment to block its interaction with MYC, PVT1 and CCAT1 genes in HeLa cells. The aim was to study the effect of HPV-18 integration on allele-specific expression levels of these host genes. Using stem cell-based models for studying neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, has been my longstanding interest.

Subject Matter Expertise

• ★ Stem Cell Research
• ☆ Neurobiology
• ☆ Alzheimer's Disease

Services

• Writing
• Research
• Data & AI

Writing Technical Writing, Copywriting, Newswriting

Research Market Research, User Research, Meta-Research, Fact Checking, Gap Analysis, Gray Literature Search, Systematic Literature Review

Data & AI Statistical Analysis

Work Experience

Postdoctoral Fellow

National Center for Biological Sciences-TIFR

August 2019 - July 2020

CSIR-UGC Junior Research Fellow

National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India

January 2011 - January 2013

Education

PhD in Neurobiology

Jamia Hamdard University

February 2013 - November 2019

M.Sc. Toxicology

Jamia Hamdard University

June 2007 - July 2009

B.Sc.

University of Kashmir

March 2004 - December 2006

Certifications

• Certification details not provided.

Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLE

(2018). Derivation of iPSC lines from two patients with familial Alzheimer's disease from India . Stem cell research.

(2018). Generation of three spinocerebellar ataxia type-12 patients derived induced pluripotent stem cell lines (IGIBi002-A, IGIBi003-A and IGIBi004-A) . Stem cell research.

PREPRINT

Deepak Kumar and Parashar Dhapola and Ashaq Hussain and Rintu Kutum and Achal K. Srivastava and Mitali Mukerji and Odity Mukherjee and Mohammed Faruq(2017). Transcriptomic Dynamics of a non-coding trinucleotide repeat expansion disorder SCA12 in iPSC derived neuronal cells: signatures of interferon induced response . []. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory