Skorput Lab

website coming soon!

Alexander Skorput, PhD

Assistant Professor of Neurology

Assistant Professor of Molecular and Systems Biology

Dr. Skorput is an Assistant Professor in the Neurology department at Dartmouth Health. He is an avid outdoors enthusiast and loves living here in the Upper Valley. Dr. Skorput is an alumni of the Dartmouth Graduate School Program in Experimental and Molecular Medicine and earned his PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Hermes Yeh before going on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota in the laboratory of Dr. Lucy Vulchanova. Dr. Skorput brings his developmental point of view and neurophysiology training to the study of neuro-immune interactions with hopes of discovering novel non-opioid analgesics for the treatment of chronic pain.

The Skorput lab officially opened January 2023 (Borwell 744E) and is actively recruiting postdocs and graduate students! Please contact Alex.Skorput@Dartmouth.edu if interested!

Amanda Cruz-Rivera, BS

Undergraduate Researcher

Amanda grew up in Utuado, Puerto Rico. She is about to complete her fifth and final year as an undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in Industrial Microbiology and is interested in following her PhD student path after graduation. This summer she has the opportunity to do a Summer Internship through Dartmouth's ASURE program in Dr. Rosato's laboratory. Her work in the lab will be focused on Tissue Resident memory T cells in oncolytic viral therapy. Amanda enjoys coffee time, the beach, walks, and playing board games.

We welcomed Amanda back to Dartmouth in 2023 as part of the MCB PhD program where she is in the lab of our collaborator, Alex Skorput!

Anais Rhoades, BS

Research Assistant

Anais Rhoades graduated from Hampton University in 2022 with a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry. There she joined Dr.Peter Njoki's lab exploring the morphology, interactions, and manipulation of multi-metallic nanoparticles units in the context of electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction. Her research interest pivoted to the area of neuroimmunology after joining the Rosato and Skorput labs in July of 2023, where she has had the opportunity to be a supportive asset to graduate students, gain research experience, and amount invaluable professional and personal growth. Her favorite part of her job is when after spending weeks discussing, planning, executing, and troubleshooting experiments, she can finally image and see those pretty bright red neurons. Her two favorite beings in the world are her cats, Pingle and London. She also enjoys time with family, learning about and speaking with strangers, and traveling.

Arielle Sclar, BS

PhD Graduate Student

Joint with Skorput Lab

Arielle grew up in Massachusetts and received her B.S. in Neuroscience and minor in Religious Studies from Lafayette College in 2022. There, she worked in the lab of Dr. Tamara Stawicki studying the roles of cilia genes in sensory hair cell regeneration in zebrafish. During her undergraduate studies she also spent time in the lab of Dr. Rosalind Segal at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studying the pediatric brain tumor microenvironment. Arielle entered the IND program at Dartmouth in 2022, and joined the Skorput and Rosato labs for her thesis. She is interested in studying neuro-immune interactions in ocular chronic pain. Outside of lab, Arielle loves to run, hike, surf, and spend time with her family.

Research interests

Dr. Skorput is a neurophysiologist interested in understanding how environmental influences drive activity dependent maturation of the nervous and immune systems throughout life. Dr. Skorput’s work focuses on how somatosensory information is processed by the nervous system, and how immunological experiences caused by pathogen exposure alter such processing. The goal of this work is to develop novel immunomodulatory analgesics for the treatment of chronic pain. Dr. Skorput implements animal models to study the interactions of the immune and nervous systems using behavioral, histological, electrophysiological, and imaging techniques in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro.

Publications

Alarm Functions of PD-1+ Brain-Resident Memory T Cells.
Musial SC, Kleist SA, Degefu HN, Ford MA, Chen T, Isaacs JF, Boussiotis VA, Skorput AGJ, Rosato PC
J Immunol. 2024 Dec 1;213(11):1585-1594. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.2400295.
PMID: 39413000

CD39 Is Expressed on Functional Effector and Tissue-resident Memory CD8+ T Cells.
Isaacs JF, Degefu HN, Chen T, Kleist SA, Musial SC, Ford MA, Searles TG, Lin CC, Skorput AGJ, Shirai K, Turk MJ, Zanazzi GJ, Rosato PC
J Immunol. 2024 Sep 1;213(5):588-599. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.2400151.
PMID: 38975728

Alarm functions of PD-1+ brain resident memory T cells.
Musial SC, Kleist SA, Degefu HN, Ford MA, Chen T, Isaacs JF, Boussiotis VA, Skorput AGJ, Rosato PC
bioRxiv. 2024 Jun 6; pii: 2024.06.06.597370. doi: 10.1101/2024.06.06.597370. Epub 2024 Jun 6.
PMID: 38895249

CD39 is expressed on functional effector and tissue resident memory CD8+ T cells.
Isaacs JF, Degefu HN, Chen T, Kleist SA, Musial SC, Ford MA, Searles TG, Lin CC, Skorput AGJ, Shirai K, Turk MJ, Zanazzi GJ, Rosato PC
bioRxiv. 2024 Mar 17; pii: 2024.03.15.585252. doi: 10.1101/2024.03.15.585252. Epub 2024 Mar 17.
PMID: 38559200

Correction to: Functional virus‑specific memory T cells survey glioblastoma.
Ning J, Gavil NV, Wu S, Wijeyesinghe S, Weyu E, Ma J, Li M, Grigore FN, Dhawan S, Skorput AGJ, Musial SC, Chen CC, Masopust D, Rosato PC
Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2022 Oct;71(10):2577-2579. doi: 10.1007/s00262-022-03168-7.
PMID: 35179625

Functional virus-specific memory T cells survey glioblastoma.
Ning J, Gavil NV, Wu S, Wijeyesinghe S, Weyu E, Ma J, Li M, Grigore FN, Dhawan S, Skorput AGJ, Musial SC, Chen CC, Masopust D, Rosato PC
Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2022 Aug;71(8):1863-1875. doi: 10.1007/s00262-021-03125-w. Epub 2022 Jan 10.
PMID: 35001153

Targeting the somatosensory system with AAV9 and AAV2retro viral vectors.
Skorput AGJ, Gore R, Schorn R, Riedl MS, Marron Fernandez de Velasco E, Hadlich B, Kitto KF, Fairbanks CA, Vulchanova L
PLoS One. 2022;17(3):e0264938. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264938. Epub 2022 Mar 10.
PMID: 35271639

The NKCC1 antagonist bumetanide mitigates interneuronopathy associated with ethanol exposure in utero.
Skorput AG, Lee SM, Yeh PW, Yeh HH
Elife. 2019 Sep 23;8 doi: 10.7554/eLife.48648. Epub 2019 Sep 23.
PMID: 31545168

AAV-Mediated Gene Delivery to the Spinal Cord by Intrathecal Injection.
Peterson CD, Skorput AGJ, Kitto KF, Wilcox GL, Vulchanova L, Fairbanks CA
Methods Mol Biol. 2019;1950:199-207. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9139-6_11.
PMID: 30783975

Involvement of the VGF-derived peptide TLQP-62 in nerve injury-induced hypersensitivity and spinal neuroplasticity.
Skorput AGJ, Zhang X, Waataja JJ, Peterson CD, Riedl MS, Kitto KF, Truong H, Huffman C, Salton SR, Fairbanks CA, Honda CN, Vulchanova L
Pain. 2018 Sep;159(9):1802-1813. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001277.
PMID: 29781959