Christian C. Naus

Biography:

Dr. Christian Naus received a PhD in Anatomy (1985) from Western University, followed by postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, CA. He started his academic career as an MRC Scholar in the Faculty of Medicine at Western University in 1987.  He was recruited to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in 2002 to Head the Departments of Anatomy & Cell Biology, and Physiology, and merged them into the current Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences. He became Director of the Life Sciences Institute from 2009-2013, promoting interdisciplinary discovery research in biomedical and health sciences.  Dr. Naus was recipient of a Canada Research Chair in Gap Junctions in Neurological Disorders, and is an elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. His research program explores the role of gap junction channels and their proteins (connexins and pannexins) in disease, including consequences of mutations on gap junction structure and function, and the role of these intercellular channels in diagnosis of disease and development of novel therapeutic strategies.  He has conducted over 25 years of research in neurobiology and cancer, focused on cellular and molecular studies to characterize the role of gap junctions in proliferation, differentiation, transgenic mouse models of neurological disorders, and preclinical therapeutic studies for stroke, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.