Pannexin Team

Pannexin Team at the UVa School of Medicine

It is becoming a truism that modern day science is increasingly inter-disciplinary and that truly seminal discoveries often require a team of investigators with a common purpose and goal, who enjoy both the individual and collective successes of the group. The four Project leaders (Ravichandran, Isakson, Leitinger, and Bayliss) have been studying the processes of cell clearance, regulation of vasoconstriction in resistance arteries, lipid biology, adipose tissue inflammation and ion channel function in various physiological and pathological contexts for many years. This Program grew organically, initially through casual scientific exchange between Project leaders, before maturing to experimental collaborations, which in turn led to several high-impact joint-publications revealing important contributions of these channels in different physiological contexts23-28. During the course of our collaborations, we collectively realized that a focused and collective effort is needed to advance our understanding of Panx1 channel function in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and to facilitate discovery of new therapeutic modalities.  This led to a Program Project application to the NHLBI that has recently been funded (HL120840).  The four main Projects are individually unique and exciting, yet each Project also greatly benefits from its association with the others.

The Pannexin Team at UVa, as part of the Program Project supported by the NHLBI, has 4 Projects and 3 Cores. All of the project leaders and core directors are faculty members in the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

• Project 1:        Kodi S. Ravichandran – Pannexin channels in atherosclerosis and inflammation
• Project 2:        Brant Isakson – Role of pannexins in vascular smooth muscle cells
• Project 3:        Norbert Leitinger – Pannexin 1 in regulation of adipose tissue inflammation
• Project 4:        Doug Bayliss – Mechanisms of pannexin channel activation in physiology and cell death
• Administrative Core/Core A:              Kodi S. Ravichandran, Core Director
• Mouse Support Core/Core B:             Dr. Ulrike Lorenz, Core Director
• Cell Physiology Core/Core C:            Dr. Bimal Desai, Core Director