Touchscreen phenotypes in models of brain diseases and the relationships between cognitive performance and hippocampal slice electrophysiology.

Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

In my MouseTRAP talk, I will describe how we used various touchscreen tests to detect cognitive phenotypes in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and several neurodevelopmental syndromes. In addition, I will discuss the results of electrophysiological evaluation of synaptic transmission in hippocampal slices from >50 lines of mice with mutations in genes encoding various synaptic proteins. Finally, we will try to find out whether mutation-induced effects on synaptic transmission in hippocampal slices correlate with the performance of corresponding mutants in a typical touchscreen test.

Maksym graduated from the Mechnikov State University (Odesa, Ukraine) in 1994 with a Diploma in Biology. In 1998, he received his PhD in Biophysics at the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology (Kyiv, Ukraine), where he studied pharmacology of voltage- and ligand-gated ion channels and excitatory synaptic transmission in the laboratory of Professor Oleg Krishtal. During his postdoctoral appointments with Professor Jeremy Lambert at the University of Dundee (2003–2004) and Professor Seth Grant at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK (2004–2010), Maksym worked with genetically altered mice to study genetic regulation of hippocampal synaptic transmission.

In 2010–2018, Maksym held industrial positions at preclinical CROs Synome Ltd (Cambridge, UK) and Charles River Discovery Research Services (Kuopio, Finland). He supervised studies of rodent brain slice electrophysiology and behaviour in a wide range of brain disease models for industrial clients and academic collaborations within several EU consortia.

In 2018–2020, as Lead for In Vivo Neurobiology at the UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London, Maksym supervised and supported in vitro and in vivo experiments in mouse models of neurodegenerative conditions.

Since December 2020, Maksym works in the Cancer Neuroscience group led by Leanne Li at the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK), looking at the role of innervation in the regulation of tumour growth