Dr. Ischiropoulos's research objectives are to develop and test novel therapeutics for long-chain fatty acid oxidation (LCFA) disorders, a collection of inherited metabolic diseases that affect the heart, liver and muscle. A second area of interest is the resolution of the nitric oxide signaling pathways at the proteome level in the cardiovascular and neuronal systems.
Along with his colleagues, one of the current projects in Dr. Ischiropoulos’s lab involves synthesizing multifunctional hybrid molecules as potential therapeutics for LCFA oxidation disorders. He tests these molecules in fibroblasts from patients with mutations in carnitine palmitoyltransferase-2, very long chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase, and mitochondrial trifunctional protein.
He uses mass spectrometry-based proteomic technologies to identify and quantify the full spectrum of nitric oxide-induced post-translational modifications in the cardiovascular system, providing for the first time a system-level appreciation of nitric oxide signalling.