Arthur Butt Author & Editor

Professor Verkhratsky, PhD, D.Sc, Member of Academia Europaea (2003), Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2013), Member of Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia of Spain (2012), member of Polish Academy of Sciences (2017); member of The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives (2012), distinguished professor of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Jinan University graduated from Kiev Medical Institute in 1983, and received PhD (1986) and D.Sc. (1993) in Physiology from Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology also in Kiev. In the period between 1989 and 1995 he was visitor scientist in Heidelberg and Gottingen, and between 1995 and 1999 he was a Research Scientist at Max Delbrück Centre of Molecular Medicine in Berlin. He joined the Division of Neuroscience, School of Biological Sciences in Manchester in September 1999, became a Professor of Neurophysiology in 2002 and served as Head of the said Division from 2002 to 2004. From 2007 to 2010 he was appointed as a visitor professor/Head of Department of Cellular and Molecular Neurophysiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Academy of Sciences of Check Republic. Dr. Verkhratsky also serves as a Research Professor of the Ikerbasque (Basque Research Council) in Bilbao, where, from 2012, he acts as Adjunct Scientific Director of the Achucarro Basque Centre for Neuroscience; from 2011 he has been an Honorary Visitor Professor at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. Alexei is the editor-in-chief of Cell Calcium, Deputy Editor-in Chief of Cell Death & Disease and member of editorial boards of many journals including Pflugers Archiv, Glia, Acta Physilogica, Purinergic Signalling, etc. Together with Arthur Butt, he published the first ever Textbook on Glial Neurobiology, and in 2013 he, again in co-authorship with Arthur Butt published a handbook Glial Physiology and Pathophysiology, which has rapidly become the reference book in the field. Dr. Verkhratsky is an internationally recognised scholar in the field of cellular neurophysiology. His research is concentrated on the mechanisms of inter- and intracellular signalling in the CNS, being especially focused on two main types of neural cells, on neurones and neuroglia. He authored a pioneering hypothesis of astroglial atrophy as a general mechanism of cognitive brain disorders including neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases. Professor Butt has been an internationally recognised glial cell biologist for over 25 years. He received his PhD from King’s College London in 1986, working with Joan Abbott, a leader in blood-brain barrier research. After a postdoctoral position in North Carolina with Ed Lieberman, he was awarded a Grass Fellowship to work at the world famous Wood’s Hole Marine Biology Laboratories. Next, he moved to Yale University to work with Bruce Ransom, where he began his work on optic nerve glia, a line of research he has pursued ever since. On return to the UK, Dr. Butt first worked again with Joan Abbott in King’s College London and on a Royal Society Fellowship at the Marine Laboratories in Plymouth, UK, before obtaining his first independent position at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in 1990. During this time, Arthur Butt worked closely with Professor Martin Berry, a leader in CNS regeneration studies. After gaining a personal Chair at King’s College in 2000, he moved to the University of Portsmouth in 2005, where he was Director of the Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Sciences. He worked closely with the Anatomical Society of the UK for many years and is co-founder of the company GliaGenesis. Much of Dr. Butt’s work has focused on oligodendrocyte cell biology and the factors that regulate their regeneration, with a particular relevance to Multiple Sclerosis. He was editor on the first special issue on NG2-glia, enigmatic cells that serve as a pool of oligodendrocyte precursor cells. Currently, the focus of his research is to learn of new ways to target these cells to promote repair of the brain, in particular in Multiple Sclerosis.