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Post Doctoral Fellow
Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center
Richmond, Virginia
Dr. Lai is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Spinal Cord Injury & Disorders Service at Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia. He received his PharmD and PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University. His Ph.D. dissertation research was focused on elucidating how organic cation transporters in different organ systems mechanistically bind to its broad array of drug substrates with the goal of providing significant insight to the advancement of future rational drug design for therapeutics targeting OCTs as well as the understanding and prediction of drug-drug interactions in polypharmacy patients. In his current position as a post-doctoral fellow at the McGuire VA medical center working under the mentorship of Ashraf Gorgey, M.PT., Ph.D. and collaboration with Edward Lesnefsky, M.D., he has been working directly with spinal cord injury (SCI) patient subjects evaluating their mitochondrial health in skeletal muscle and blood cells using various assays to evaluate their electron transport chain activity and functional respiration, as well as skeletal muscle oxygenation through near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Additionally, He has also been involved with assisting SCI study subjects with rehabilitative activities including NMES-induced exercise training. He has aspirations to become an independent VA research scientist examining the effects of rehabilitative and pharmacological interventions on mitochondrial health in individuals with SCI. His specific interest is understanding and studying the cellular/molecular mechanisms behind SCI-induced muscle atrophy and developing the best pharmacologic and rehabilitative treatment regimen for restoring/preserving mitochondrial function to prevent long-term medical comorbidities (e.g. CVD, diabetes, metabolic syndrome) in individuals with SCI.
Friday, October 23, 2020
2:00 PM – 3:15 PM EST