Bio
 

Lori Birder, PhD is a tenured Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  Lori completed her PhD in Neuropharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowships in Physiology at Showa University Tokyo Japan and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Her research work has been durably funded by the NIH including a NIH MERIT award and currently three R01 grants studying bladder dysfunction with stress/pain and aging.  Dr. Birder has also investigated the impact of aging and bladder pain on cellular homeostasis, which is likely to involve mitochondrial damage and increased oxidative stress and altered purine metabolism. The most recent evidence has shown that targeting a single enzyme- PNPase- restores aging-associated purine dysregulation and resultant mitochondrial dysfunction/oxidative stress in both the lower urinary tract and ocular tissues- suggesting that this treatment may be ‘geroprotective’.  
Lori has published more than 240 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and reviews.  She has organized/chaired a number of symposia and workshops involving chronic visceral pain and aging, is a member of several scientific/editorial boards and scientific societies (e.g., International Continence Society, International Association for the Study of Pain- IASP) and serves as Founding Editor-in-Chief for the open access International Continence Society (ICS) journal ‘Continence’.