Researcher profile

Alexander Dityatev

Since 2012 Alexander Dityatev is a full Professor at the University of Magdeburg and the head of the Molecular Neuroplasticity research group at the DZNE. His group is investigating the role of ECM molecules in aging and major brain diseases, including epilepsy, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, and developing new strategies to image and target the ECM in the brain. He is contributing to the work of graduate school SynAge (Synaptic aging), the CRC 1436 (Neural resources of cognition), the GoBio PolySia team and the SynMech EU consortium on magnetogenetics. Alexander Dityatev graduated in Mathematics at the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) State University in 1985. In 1991 he accomplished his Ph.D. in Biology with a thesis on the quantal analysis of glutamate release at the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry in Leningrad. In 1992-1996, he worked with Peter Clamann as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Physiology, University of Bern, where he studied relationships between the structure and function of synaptic connections in the spinal cord. In 1996-2007, he worked with Melitta Schachner as an electrophysiology unit leader at the Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg. There, he and his colleagues uncovered synaptic functions of several cell adhesion and extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules, such as tenascins, chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans, NCAM, L1, CHL1, and their associated glycans, including HNK-1 and PSA. Many of these functions turned out to involve an interplay between recognition molecules and ligand- or voltage-gated ion channels, resulting in the regulation of perisomatic GABAergic inhibition, hippocampal long-term potentiation/depression, and contextual memory. In 2004-2007, Alexander Dityatev was a German Research Foundation (DFG) Fellow at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. In 2006-2009, he served as an affiliated Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmacal Sciences, Auburn University, while in 2007-2011 he was a Contract Professor at the University of Genova. In 2007-2012, being a Senior Researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dr. Dityatev published several mechanistic studies uncovering how synaptic plasticity and learning are regulated by the polysialylated form of NCAM and hyaluronic acid through the regulation of extrasynaptic GluN2B receptors and L-type Ca2+ channels. In 2010-2014, Dr. Dityatev chaired the COST Action “Brain Extracellular Matrix in Health and Disease” and served as an Invited Professor at the University of Nizhny Novgorod. In 2013-2016, he was coordinating the Neuron Era-Net “Superresolution imaging and therapeutic targeting of extracellular matrix-mediated signaling in brain diseases”. His group was a part of the initial training networks EXTRABRAIN and ECMED and is supported by DFG, BMBF, COEN, and HFSP. Dr. Alexander Dityatev co-authored 200 papers (>16,000 citations, h-index=70 in 2025: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YvirjI4AAAAJ&hl=en), 4 patents, and co-edited books on “Molecular Mechanisms of Synaptogenesis”, Springer, 2006 and “Brain Extracellular Matrix in Health and Disease”, Elsevier, 2014.