Scientific Highlights
Dr. Srivastava’s laboratory has provided novel insights on the mechanism of antidiabetic and insulinomimetic effects of vanadium-based protein tyrosine phosphatase inhibitors. They have discovered that insulin-like effects of these compounds are exerted through an insulin receptor-independent process. They have also demonstrated an essential role of insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF1-R) transactivation in triggering organo-vanadium compound-induced gluco-regulatory signal transduction pathway in liver derived cells.

Dr. Srivastava’s laboratory has also demonstrated that reactive oxygen species (ROS) modulate insulin, vanadium, and vasoactive peptide-induced signal transduction pathways and thereby suggested an involvement of oxidative stress-induced signalling events in cardiovascular complications of diabetes. Ongoing studies along these lines in his laboratory would help to identify new targets to develop novel therapies for diabetes.

Dr. Ashok K. Srivastava is a Professor at the Department of Medicine, Université de Montréal, and Head of the Laboratory of Cell Signaling at the Research Center of the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1974 from Kanpur University, Kanpur, India, based on the research done at the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, India. Dr. Srivastava received post-doctoral training at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and at the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. In 1981, he joined the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal as a Senior Investigator in the Diabetes and Metabolism research group. In 1992, Dr. Srivastava moved to the Research Center of the CHUM as a Research Scientist. In 1998, he was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, and was subsequently promoted to Professor of Medicine in 2005.

Dr. Srivastava has published more than 60 full-length papers, 11 book chapters and has edited 3 books. He has contributed in the training of many graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. He is a member of several scientific societies, including the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Canadian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the International Society for Heart Research. Dr. Srivastava has served or is serving as a guest editor of many journals, such as Antioxidant and Redox Signaling, Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics and Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, and is currently a member of the editorial board of Advances in Biochemistry in health and disease. He has also organized several International symposia and workshops, and also serves on the grant review panels of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.