New Faculty Member

I am pleased to introduce Dr. Catrina Loucks, who is a new full-time faculty member in our department. This is a position shared jointly with the Department of Pediatrics, and is one of the faculty renewal positions we applied for in 2019. The area of research for Dr. Loucks is the Pharmacogenomics of Pain.

Dr. Loucks completed her training in Alberta and BC, most recently as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Pediatrics under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Carleton. Her area of expertise is exploring the functional impacts of genetic mutations using C.elegans as a model to understand how particular genes can lead to human diseases. During her post-doctoral fellowship she has specifically explored how genetic variation contributes to the likelihood of developing drug-related toxicities, especially in childhood cancer treatment. However, she has a particular interest in maternal and child pain management, and will be expanding her current work on the pharmacogenomics of morphine in the pediatric population to adult populations. With the recent discovery of an opioid system in C. elegans that appears relevant to human opioid signaling, Dr. Loucks plans to explore the impact of genetic variants uncovered during her PhD. Her lab will be located in the Division of Translational Therapeutics located on the Children and Women’s campus.

Welcome Dr. Loucks!

Dr. Roanne Preston.