Yoon-Seong Kim, MD, PhD

Yoon-Seong Kim, MD, PhD earned his medical degree from Kyung-Hee University Medical College in Seoul, Korea, and his PhD in neuroscience from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 2003 under the supervision of Prof. Tong H. Joh. He then joined Dr. Flint Beal’s lab in the same institute as a postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Kim went on to join the research faculty at Cornell as an instructor in 2006 and was promoted to assistant professor in 2009. In 2010, he moved to the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida as an assistant professor of neurodegenerative disorders and became an associate professor with tenure in 2015. He joined the RWJMS Institute for Neurological Therapeutics at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in 2020. His research has been funded by multiple grants from the NIH, DOD and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. He serves on NIH grant review panels and on the editorial board of Scientific Reports.

Dr. Kim’s research focuses mainly on the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms underlying oxidative stress-related nigrostriatal degeneration in Parkinson’s disease (PD) using a range of rodent PD models. He reported for the first time that NADPH oxidase 1 (NOX1) is expressed in dopaminergic neurons and that NOX1-derived ROS is responsible for dopaminergic neuronal degeneration and α-synuclein aggregation, which are pathological hallmarks of PD. Currently, his research is expanding to investigate the molecular mechanisms governing oxidative stress-mediated α-synuclein changes including epigenetic and translational regulation as well as protein aggregation and impact on mitochondrial functions. He has recently introduced the innovative concept of transcriptional mutagenesis (TM) of the SNCA gene and its contribution to PD pathogenesis. This original idea is widely applicable to other neurodegenerative conditions including Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) and Alzheimer’s disease. His research pipeline is highly interdisciplinary and integrates core areas of neurodegenerative diseases.