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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!
Arielle Sclar
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
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
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
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
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
Chronic Gestational Exposure to Ethanol Leads to Enduring Aberrances in Cortical Form and Function in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex.
Skorput AG, Yeh HH
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2016 Jul;40(7):1479-88. doi: 10.1111/acer.13107. Epub 2016 May 31.
PMID: 27242215
Persistent Interneuronopathy in the Prefrontal Cortex of Young Adult Offspring Exposed to Ethanol In Utero.
Skorput AG, Gupta VP, Yeh PW, Yeh HH
J Neurosci. 2015 Aug 5;35(31):10977-88. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1462-15.2015.
PMID: 26245961
Effects of ethanol exposure in utero on Cajal-Retzius cells in the developing cortex.
Skorput AG, Yeh HH
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2015 May;39(5):853-62. doi: 10.1111/acer.12696. Epub 2015 Apr 6.
PMID: 25845402