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About

Dr Alisa Glukhova is a laboratory head in the Structural Biology division at WEHI and a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Melbourne. She earned her PhD in Chemical Biology in 2014 from the University of Michigan, where she worked on solving structures of lipid-modifying enzymes using x-ray crystallography. During her postdoctoral training at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, she used x-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, and pharmacology techniques to study different G protein-coupled receptors.

Since joining WEHI in 2020, Alisa has focused on understanding the structural and biochemical aspects of the Wnt signalling pathway, an important pharmacological target for treating many cancers. Using structural biology, her team captures snapshots of different stages in the Wnt signalling cascade to understand the atomic picture and gain insights into various aspects of signal transmission through Wnt pathways. Key areas of interest include Wnt acylation by acyl-transferase Porcupine, Wnt secretion and transport outside cells, and the initiation of the Wnt signalling cascade through Wnt interactions with its receptors, Frizzled, and co-receptors. Alisa ultimately hopes to use this atomic-level information to develop better therapies for devastating human conditions, such as cancer.

Publications

Selected publications from Dr Alisa Glukhova

Bennetts FM, Venugopal H, Glukhova A, Mobbs JI, Ventura S, Thal DM. Structural insights into the human P2X1 receptor and ligand interactions. Nature Communications. 2024;15(1):10.1038/s41467-024-52776-7

Meng Y, Garnish SE, Davies KA, Black KA, Leis AP, Horne CR, Hildebrand JM, Hoblos H, Fitzgibbon C, Young SN, Dite T, Dagley LF, Venkat A, Kannan N, Koide A, Koide S, Glukhova A, Czabotar PE, Murphy JM. Phosphorylation-dependent pseudokinase domain dimerization drives full-length MLKL oligomerization. Nature Communications. 2023;14(1):10.1038/s41467-023-42255-w

Mobbs JI, Black KA, Tran M, Burger WAC, Venugopal H, Holman TR, Holinstat M, Thal DM, Glukhova A. Cryo-EM structures of human arachidonate 12S-lipoxygenase bound to endogenous and exogenous inhibitors. Blood. 2023;142(14):10.1182/blood.2023020441

Burger WAC, Pham V, Vuckovic Z, Powers AS, Mobbs JI, Laloudakis Y, Glukhova A, Wootten D, Tobin AB, Sexton PM, Paul SM, Felder CC, Danev R, Dror RO, Christopoulos A, Valant C, Thal DM. Xanomeline displays concomitant orthosteric and allosteric binding modes at the M4 mAChR. Nature Communications. 2023;14(1):10.1038/s41467-023-41199-5

Tran M, Yang K, Glukhova A, Holinstat M, Holman T. Inhibitory Investigations of Acyl-CoA Derivatives against Human Lipoxygenase Isozymes. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2023;24(13):10.3390/ijms241310941

Vuckovic Z, Wang J, Pham V, Mobbs JI, Belousoff MJ, Bhattarai A, Burger WA, Thompson G, Yeasmin M, Nawaratne V, Leach K, van der Westhuizen ET, Khajehali E, Liang Y-L, Glukhova A, Wootten D, Lindsley CW, Tobin A, Sexton P, Danev R, Valant C, Miao Y, Christopoulos A, Thal DM. Pharmacological hallmarks of allostery at the M4 muscarinic receptor elucidated through structure and dynamics. eLife. 2023;12:10.7554/elife.83477

Zhang L, Mobbs JI, May LT, Glukhova A, Thal DM. The impact of cryo-EM on determining allosteric modulator-bound structures of G protein-coupled receptors. Current Opinion in Structural Biology. 2023;79:10.1016/j.sbi.2023.102560

Pymm P, Redmond SJ, Dolezal O, Mordant F, Lopez E, Cooney JP, Davidson KC, Haycroft ER, Tan CW, Seneviratna R, Grimley SL, Purcell DFJ, Kent SJ, Wheatley AK, Wang L-F, Leis A, Glukhova A, Pellegrini M, Chung AW, Subbarao K, Uldrich AP, Tham W-H, Godfrey DI, Gherardin NA. Biparatopic nanobodies targeting the receptor binding domain efficiently neutralize SARS-CoV-2. iScience. 2022;25(11):10.1016/j.isci.2022.105259

Gan ZY, Callegari S, Cobbold SA, Cotton TR, Mlodzianoski MJ, Schubert AF, Geoghegan ND, Rogers KL, Leis A, Dewson G, Glukhova A, Komander D. Publisher Correction: Activation mechanism of PINK1. Nature. 2022;603(7903):10.1038/s41586-022-04591-7

Gan ZY, Callegari S, Cobbold SA, Cotton TR, Mlodzianoski MJ, Schubert AF, Geoghegan ND, Rogers KL, Leis A, Dewson G, Glukhova A, Komander D. Activation mechanism of PINK1. Nature. 2022;602(7896):10.1038/s41586-021-04340-2

Lab research projects

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