Luda Diatchenko MD, PhD

Luda Diatchenko, MD, Ph.D. is a Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Anesthesia, and Faculty of Dentistry, at McGill University, Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain. She earned her MD and Ph.D. in the field of Molecular Biology from the Russian State Medical University. Dr. Diatchenko started her career in industry, she was a Leader of the RNA Expression Group at Clontech, Inc., and subsequently, Director of Gene Discovery at Attagene, Inc. During this time, Dr. Diatchenko was actively involved in the development of several widely used and widely cited molecular tools for the analysis of gene expression and regulation.

Dr. Diatchenko’s academic career started in 2000 in the Center for Neurosensory Disorders at the University of North Carolina. Her research since then is focused on determining the cellular and molecular biological mechanisms by which functional genetic variations impact human pain perception and risk of development of chronic pain conditions, enabling new approaches to identify new drug targets, treatment responses to analgesics, and diagnostic. Dr. Diatchenko is a frequent speaker at national and international pain research conferences. Multiple collaborative activities allow the Diatchenko group to take basic genetic findings all the way from human association studies, through molecular and cellular mechanisms, to animal models, and ultimately to human clinical trials. Dr. Diatchenko holds a joint appointment in the School of Dentistry which you can read about here and the Department of Anesthesia, School of Medicine, which you can read about here.