Office:	569 Bridgeside Point I
	100 Technology Drive
	Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Phone:	339-368-4594
Fax:	412-383-9055
E-mail:	aparkhitko@pitt.edu

Education
	MS, Russian State Medical University, Russia; Partially Carried Out at Fox Chase Cancer Center, PA, 2007
	PhD, Russian State Medical University, Russia; Partially Carried Out at Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 2013

Training
	Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 2020

Loss of metabolic homeostasis is a hallmark of aging. Using Drosophila as a model system, we demonstrated that aging is characterized by extensive reprogramming of methionine metabolism and delayed processing of SAH, a competitive inhibitor of a broad spectrum of methyltransferases. Moreover, we introduced into flies the bacterial enzyme Methioninase, which is capable of degrading methionine and has been safely tested in several cancer clinical trials. Methioninase dramatically extended fly lifespan. In addition, we demonstrated that tyrosine metabolism is altered with age due to the activation of the tyrosine degradation pathway. We found that suppression of mETC complex I drives upregulation of enzymes in the tyrosine degradation pathway and depletes tyrosine, which is required for the production tyrosine-derived neuromediators. The immediate goals of our laboratory are to determine whether ‘resetting’ the methionine and tyrosine metabolic pathways back to normal is evolutionary conserved and can be translated to delay aging of higher organisms and improve phenotypes related to Alzheimer’s disease. In the longer term, we will expand our studies by implementing carbon isotope-labeled nutrients coupled with mass spectrometry analysis to determine age-dependent changes in fates of nutrients at the whole-organism and tissue-specific levels; introduce bacterial enzymes similar to Methioninase that can potentially provide novel metabolic routes/functions to eukaryotic cells and help ‘reset’ age-dependent metabolic changes; and repurpose currently existing CRISPR/Cas9 multiplex systems for simultaneous targeting of different metabolic pathways to achieve additive/synergistic effects on lifespan.

For my complete bibliography, Click Here.

Selected Publications: