Find an expert

Dr. Aleksandr Kakinen is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), University of Queensland. He completed his PhD in 2014 at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences from 2016 to 2020.

Dr. Kakinen’s research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases, particularly amyloid-related disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. His expertise spans structural biology, protein aggregation, neuroinflammation, and nanomedicine, with a special emphasis on developing brain-targeted delivery systems for neuroprotective therapies.

He has authored over 65 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including Nature Communications, Advanced Science, ACS Nano, and Chemical Society Reviews. Dr. Kakinen also leads a research team that combines fundamental biophysics with translational studies to advance treatments for neurodegenerative disorders.

In addition to his scientific work, he founded a design studio specialising in scientific illustrations and biomedical animations, enhancing science communication through creative visual storytelling.

A life-long fascination in sciences provided me with the inspiration to graduate in exercise physiology (University of Sherbrooke, Canada, 2004), complete a PhD in physiology/biophysics (University of Sherbrooke, 2009) and continue in my current role as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS) of The University of Queensland. I am a physiologist first and foremost with a particular interest in understanding how skeletal muscle cell normally functions so as to try and elucidate what changes or factors contribute to various forms of muscle weakness with ageing, inactivity or various chronic diseases.

During my previous postdoctoral appointment at La Trobe University (Melbourne, 2010-2017), I have gained considerable experience using the "mechanically skinned muscle fibre" technique in animal muscle. Importantly, I have developed this technique for the first time in human muscle which allows the exciting opportunity to investigate cellular mechanisms of muscle weakness in different clinical population. This is vitally important since most of our existing knowledge on muscle function comes from studies on muscles obtained from animal models. This technical breakthrough has been recognized by editorials of different leading scientific journals in the field of Physiology. I’m now a world recognized expert of this technique which has immense potential for examining any number of physiological questions and even allows for biochemical analyses of any protein of interest in the same cell.