Jinghui Luo, PhD

Dr. Jinghui Luo received his PhD in Biophysics from Leiden Institute of Chemistry in Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 2014. During his PhD studies, he worked on Alzheimer’s Aβ interactions with endogenous molecules, cyclic peptides and non-chaperone proteins that affect the aggregation pathways, in aqueous solutions by using different biophysical and biochemical methods. Afterwards, he was trained as a postdoc research fellow at Oxford University, Chemical Research Laboratory, UK, where he investigated amyloid pore formation in lipid bilayer by using optical and electrical single-channel recordings. He is currently a tenure-track scientist and a principal investigator in the Division of Biology and Chemistry at Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland. His team investigates the structure of Alzheimer or Parkinson associated amyloid toxic oligomers in a membrane environment. One of methods is to display amyloid oligomer on an α-hemolysin heptamer, in which he substitutes the transmembrane hairpin of the latter with an Alzheimer’s Aβ peptide. The physiological relevance of these oligomers has been verified by in-house developed single-channel technology and conventional methods. Cryo-EM analysis is now giving the first structural insights into the displayed Aβ oligomers. These novel methods contribute to the understanding of the neurotoxicity mechanisms and to the development of highly conformational-specific antibodies. He has published more than 30 papers mainly in amyloid related research over last 10 years and has received several awards, including the Dutch Research Council's career development Rubicon award and the Nobel foundation's travel award. He had served as an associate editor for Frontiers in Neuroscience.