Natalia N. Nalivaeva PhD, DSc

Natalia Nalivaeva gained her B.Sc. in Biochemistry at the Saint Petersburg (former Leningrad) State University and then obtained her Ph.D. at the I.M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg (Russia). In her Ph.D. thesis she studied chromatin organisation in somatic and sex cells of various evolutionary types. After obtaining her Ph.D., Natalia was a senior researcher in the same Institute studying brain gangliosides and later working on brain acetylcholinesterases and other brain enzymes underlying memory and cognitive functions, as well as brain asymmetry.

In 1997 she has joined Prof. A.J. Turner’s group at the University of Leeds and started to work on brain metallopeptidases, in particular, the amyloid-degrading enzyme neprilysin. She is also continuing her extensive research at the Sechenov Institute and in 2006 she has obtained there her D.Sc. degree for the study of the effects of hypoxia and ischemia on amyloid metabolism and amyloid-degrading enzymes. Currently she is working on the mechanisms of epigenetic regulation of amyloid-degrading enzymes expression in mammalian cells in culture and in mammalian brain in vivo using a model of prenatal hypoxia.