Mahtab Tavasoli, PhD
Dr. Mahtab Tavasoli is an Assistant Professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute (The Neuro), 91丝瓜视频. She obtained her PhD from the University of Alberta and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and Dalhousie University.
Her research program focuses on understanding how lipid metabolism shapes neuronal function, resilience, and vulnerability in neurodegenerative disease. She is particularly interested in phospholipid synthesis pathways and membrane dynamics, and how disruptions in lipid homeostasis alter cellular architecture, organelle function, and stress responses in neurons.
Using an integrative approach that combines lipidomics, live-cell imaging, and metabolic flux analysis, her work aims to define how lipid imbalance contributes to the initiation and progression of diseases such as Parkinson鈥檚 disease. A central theme of her research is identifying how lipid supply and demand are coordinated in neurons, and how failure of this balance leads to impaired membrane remodeling, defective autophagy, and ultimately neurodegeneration.
In parallel, Dr. Tavasoli develops gene therapy strategies for rare inherited disorders of lipid metabolism, with a focus on translating mechanistic insights into therapeutic interventions. Her work bridges rare and common diseases, leveraging fundamental discoveries in genetic lipid disorders to uncover shared pathways that drive neurodegeneration more broadly.
Her goal is to establish lipid metabolism as a central, targetable axis in brain disease and to build a research program that integrates mechanistic biology with translational impact.
Her office and laboratory are located at The Neuro, 91丝瓜视频, where she leads a growing research team focused on lipid biology and neurodegeneration. She can be reached at mahtab.tavasoli [at] mcgill.ca
1. Tavasoli, M. et al. Mechanism of action and therapeutic route for a muscular dystrophy caused by a genetic defect in lipid metabolism. Nat Commun 13, 1559 (2022).
2. Tavasoli, M., Lahire, S., Reid, T., Brodovsky, M. & McMaster, C.R. Genetic diseases of the Kennedy pathways for membrane synthesis. J Biol Chem 295, 17877-17886 (2020).
3. Klockner, C. et al. Bi-allelic variants in CHKA cause a neurodevelopmental disorder with epilepsy and microcephaly. Brain 145, 1916-1923 (2022).
4. Tavasoli, M. et al. Neurodevelopmental disease-causing variants in choline kinase CHKA gene couple phosphatidylcholine synthesis to oxidative stress damage and disease etiology. J Biol Chem 302, 110983 (2026).
