Researcher | Research Overview
Behzad has been leading the team working on Selenon-related myopathy within the Beggs laboratory. Over the years he developed cellular and animal models for this disease. The main focus of his work is developing therapies for this disease by means of high throughput drug screening and gene therapy.
Researcher | Research Background
Behzad obtained his PhD from René Descartes University in Paris, France. As a graduate student he was the first to identify mutations in SELENON gene (formerly SEPN1), which led to the characterization of a clinical entity now known as Selenon-related myopathy. After his graduate studies, he pursued his postdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen in Ulla Wever’s laboratory, where he showed that overexpression of ADAM12 protein could alleviate the phenotype of the mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Behzad later joined the Beggs laboratory to pursue his research on Selenon-related myopathy.