Professor Dmitri Ivanov

Contact

Department

Department of Biochemistry

Ivanov, Dmitri N., Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Personal Statement:

Dr. Ivanov is a structural biologist and biochemist with more than 20 years of experience in using experimental tools of biochemistry and biophysics to address problems of protein structure and function. He has trained in the laboratories of biomolecular NMR pioneers, Al Redfield at Brandeis University and Gerhard Wagner at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Ivanov Website


Education

Ph.D., Biophysics and Structural Biology - Brandeis State University, St. Petersburg, Russia

Research

Research Summary

My laboratory is interested in innate antiviral immunity and the proteins that protect us against retroviral infections. Understanding how our antiviral defenses work, and how HIV-1 is able to penetrate them, may open novel avenues for treating and possibly curing this deadly infection.

TRIM5alpha is an immune factor that protects rhesus macaques against HIV, but the virus evades the human variant of this restriction factor. We investigate how TRIM5alpha proteins block retroviral replication, why the human version is not active against HIV and whether anything could potentially be done about it.

SAMHD1 forms another line of antiretroviral defenses, and its activity determines which non-cycling immune cells become infected by HIV-1. We want to understand the mechanism of SAMHD1 immune function and how it may contribute to HIV latency, one of the key remaining challenges in our search for the cure.

We are also interested in identifying and optimizing small molecules with immunomodulatory or anti-cancer activities. Our cancer-related targets include DNA repair nucleases XPF/ERCC1 and TREX2, and for modulation of immune responses we target TREX1 and SAMHD1.

To gain mechanistic insight we use NMR, X-ray crystallography, mass spectrometry, fluorescence-based assays, high-throughput screening and many other experimental tools from the powerful arsenal of modern biochemistry and structural biology

Awards & Accomplishments

YearName
1987- 1989Diplomas in Russian National High-School Olympiads in Physics, Chemistry and Informatics
1992- 1993American Collegiate Consortium Fellowship
2005- 2007Scholarship Award from the Harvard Center for AIDS Research
2006Ramon y Cajal Fellowship, Spain (Declined)
2008Medical Research Council Research Grant, UK (Declined)
2009Chaires D’Excellence Award, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France (Declined)
2010- 2014CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research
2015- 2018Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund Young Investigator Award

Affiliations

  • Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Unversity of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio

Publications

Complete List of Publications

    • Biris N, Tomashevski A, Bhattacharya A, Diaz-Griffero F, Ivanov DN. 2013. Rhesus monkey TRIM5α SPRY domain recognizes multiple epitopes that span several capsid monomers on the surface of the HIV-1 mature viral core. Journal of molecular biology. 425(24):5032-44. PMCID: PMC411666
    • Yang Y, Brandariz-Nuñez A, Fricke T, Ivanov DN, Sarnak Z, Diaz-Griffero F. 2014. Binding of the rhesus TRIM5α PRYSPRY domain to capsid is necessary but not sufficient for HIV-1 restriction. Virology. 448:217-28. PMCID: PMC3900861
    • Kovalskyy DB, Ivanov DN. 2014. Recognition of the HIV capsid by the TRIM5α restriction factor is mediated by a subset of pre-existing conformations of the TRIM5α SPRY domain. Biochemistry. 53(9):1466-76. PMCID: PMC4119003
    • Bhattacharya A, Alam SL, Fricke T, Zadrozny K, Sedzicki J, Taylor AB, Demeler B, Pornillos O, Ganser-Pornillos BK, Diaz-Griffero F, Ivanov DN, Yeager M. 2014. Structural basis of HIV-1 capsid recognition by PF74 and CPSF6. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 111(52):18625-30. PMCID: PMC4284599
    • Wang Z, Bhattacharya A, Ivanov DN. 2015. Identification of Small-Molecule Inhibitors of the HuR/RNA Interaction Using a Fluorescence Polarization Screening Assay Followed by NMR Validation. PloS one. 10(9):e0138780. PMCID: PMC4577092
    • Yudina Z, Roa A, Johnson R, Biris N, de Souza Aranha Vieira DA, Tsiperson V, Reszka N, Taylor AB, Hart PJ, Demeler B, Diaz-Griffero F, Ivanov DN. 2015. RING Dimerization Links Higher-Order Assembly of TRIM5α to Synthesis of K63-Linked Polyubiquitin. Cell reports. 12(5):788-97. PMCID: PMC4526822
    • Rajamanickam S, Panneerdoss S, Gorthi A, Timilsina S, Onyeagucha B, Kovalskyy D, Ivanov D, Hanes MA, Vadlamudi RK, Chen Y, Bishop AJ, Arbiser JL, Rao MK. 2016. Inhibition of FoxM1-Mediated DNA Repair by Imipramine Blue Suppresses Breast Cancer Growth and Metastasis. Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. 22(14):3524-36. PMCID: PMC4947433
    • Bhattacharya A, Wang Z, White T, Buffone C, Nguyen LA, Shepard CN, Kim B, Demeler B, Diaz-Griffero F, Ivanov DN. 2016. Effects of T592 phosphomimetic mutations on tetramer stability and dNTPase activity of SAMHD1 can not explain the retroviral restriction defect. Scientific reports. 6:31353. PMCID: PMC4980677
    • Wang Z, Bhattacharya A, Villacorta J, Diaz-Griffero F, Ivanov DN. 2016. Allosteric Activation of SAMHD1 by Deoxynucleotidetriphosphate (dNTP)-Dependent Tetramerization Requires dNTP Concentrations That Are Similar to dNTP Concentrations Observed in Cycling T Cells. The Journal of biological chemistry. PMID: 27566548
    • Hou C, Weidenbach S, Cano KE, Wang Z, Mitra P, Ivanov DN, Rohr J, Tsodikov OV. 2016. Structures of mithramycin analogues bound to DNA and implications for targeting transcription factor FLI1. Nucleic acids research. PMID: 27587584