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Dr Mark Baker

Mark

Non-clinical Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience

Centre: Centre for Neuroscience, Surgery and Trauma

Email: m.d.baker@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: 020 7882 2287

Profile

Mark Baker completed an honours degree in Physiology at Leeds University in 1981. Following his PhD studies on the hippocampus in St Andrews, he spent two post-docs with Hugh Bostock FRS at the Institute of Neurology studying the function and pharmacology of axonal ion channels, and he assisted Hugh in devising the methodology for ‘threshold-electrotonus’ recording, now used clinically to assess peripheral nerve function. Mark gained experience of pharmacology in industry at Pfizer in the 1980s, and then in the lab of J. Murdoch Ritchie FRS in the department of Pharmacology at Yale. While in the USA, Mark made a detailed characterization of the potassium channels expressed in Schwann cells, using polypeptide neurotoxins. Mark was a member of John Wood's molecular nociception group at UCL from 2000 to 2005, and he studied the effects of Na+ channel gene knock-out or mutation on damage sensing neurones, using patch-clamp techniques. Mark has made contributions to understanding the roles played by distinct Na+ channel sub-types in generating neuropathic and inflammatory pain. He was appointed non-clinical lecturer in Neuroscience in 2005.

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