Lori L Isom, PhD

Dr. Isom is the Maurice H. Seevers Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology, Professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, and Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School. She serves as the inaugural Faculty Chair for Women's Careers at Michigan Medicine. She received her PhD in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. William A. Catterall at the University of Washington. Dr. Isom served as Director of the Program in Biomedical Sciences and Assistant Dean for Graduate Education in the University of Michigan Medical School from 2008-2014. In 2014 she was appointed Interim Chair of Pharmacology. In 2015, following a national search, she was appointed Chair of Pharmacology. From 2016-2019 she served as elected Chair of the Endowment for Basic Sciences (EBS). She serves on many institutional committees including as an elected member of the Medical School Executive Committee.

Dr. Isom’s research program at the University of Michigan focuses on voltage-gated sodium channel function and the roles of sodium channel gene variants in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE), including Dravet syndrome. Her lab investigates SCN1A, SCN1B, and SCN8A DEE variants in mouse models and in human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) neurons and cardiac myocytes. Dr. Isom showed, in collaboration with Dr. Jack Parent, that the high risk of SUDEP in Dravet syndrome may result from a predisposition to cardiac arrhythmias in addition to neuronal hyperexcitability, reflecting haploinsufficiency of SCN1A in heart and brain and the resulting compensatory overexpression of other sodium channel genes in those tissues. Their work predicted cardiac abnormalities in a Dravet syndrome patient prior to clinical evaluation. Most recently, she has collaborated with Stoke Therapeutics to develop the first antisense oligonucleotide precision therapeutic agent for Dravet syndrome, which is now in clinical trials. Dr. Isom is Co-PI of the NINDS-funded EpiMVP Center Without Walls.

Dr. Isom serves as PI of the NIH funded, Pharmacological Sciences Training Program T32 grant. She chairs the Dravet Syndrome Foundation Scientific Advisory Board, served a three-year term on the Board of the American Epilepsy Society (AES) and now co-chairs the AES/NINDS Benchmarks Committee and the Research Recognition and Awards Committee, and serves on the International League Against Epilepsy ILAE) Translational Task Force, the Epilepsy Action Network, and Partners Against Mortality in Epilepsy (PAME). She chaired the NIH ESTA study section, and serves on editorial boards of scientific journals. She has received awards for research and mentoring, including her current NINDS Javits R37 MERIT award and the University of Michigan Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and a Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society. Dr. Isom was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021, received the American Epilepsy Society Basic Science Award in 2022, the 2024 Isabelle Rapin Lifetime Achievement Award from Albert Einstein College of Medicine/ Montefiore University Hospital, and the Shideman-Sterling Award, University of Minnesota Department of Pharmacology in 2025.

Physiology and pharmacology of voltage-gated sodium channels;
Role of sodium channel gene variants in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, cardiac arrhythmia, and SUDEP;
Development of trangenic animal models of developmental and epileptic encephalopathy;
Develoment of gene-modifying and gene replacement therapies for developmental and epileptic encephalopathy.