Brinda Ravikumar

First author of the 2004 study showing that switching off mTOR clears the toxic protein of Huntington disease by autophagy

Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (2004)

Brinda Ravikumar did this work in David Rubinsztein's laboratory at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, the affiliation PubMed gives for the study. The Atlas has no other sourced details of her career, so this profile covers only that paper.

In the Atlas she is first author of RAV2004 in Nature Genetics. The study found that mTOR gets trapped inside the clumps formed by the mutant huntingtin protein, which turns autophagy on. Blocking mTOR with rapamycin in flies, or with the related drug CCI-779 in mice, helped cells clear the toxic protein and eased disease signs. It was early proof that inducing autophagy could be a treatment strategy for this kind of brain disease.

Milestones in the Atlas

A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.

Year	Evidence	Study
2004	A	Inhibition of mTOR induces autophagy and reduces toxicity of polyglutamine expansions in fly and mouse models of Huntington disease RAV2004 First author: blocking mTOR induced autophagy, cleared mutant huntingtin and reduced toxicity in fly and mouse models of Huntington disease.
2006	M	Rapamycin alleviates toxicity of different aggregate-prone proteins BER2006 Co-author: rapamycin-induced autophagy cleared several polyglutamine and polyalanine proteins in cells and reduced tau toxicity in flies.

Co-authors in the Atlas

People with a profile here who share at least one study with Brinda Ravikumar.

David C. Rubinsztein Showed that rapamycin induces autophagy to clear the toxic protein of Huntington's disease, and that where lysosomes sit inside a cell helps set mTORC1 activity

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