Robert Naviaux, MD, Professor of Genetics at UCSD.

Dr. Naviaux directs a core laboratory for metabolomics at UCSD. He is the co-founder and a former president of the Mitochondrial Medicine Society (MMS), and a founding associate editor of the journal Mitochondrion. He is the discoverer of the cause of Alpers syndrome—the oldest Mendelian form of mitochondrial disease—and the developer of the first diagnostic DNA test for it.

He is a Salk-trained virologist, and molecular and cell biologist, the inventor of the popular pCL retroviral gene transfer vectors, and was trained at NIH in tumor immunology and natural killer cell biology. His work in ecosystem dynamics has guided new work in microbiome ecology and metabolism in autism spectrum disorders. His 2013 paper reporting preclinical studies on the role of purinergic signaling and the cell danger response in autism was ranked the #1 most-viewed report of 2013 on the Simons Foundation autism web site. He was the director of SAT1 trial, the first FDA-approved clinical trial to study the safety and test the effects of suramin on behavior and language in children with autism.

“ME/CFS is a human dauer syndrome that is maintained by persistent activation of the cell danger response (CDR) through purinergic signaling.” https://naviauxlab.ucsd.edu/science-item/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-research/

This roundtable part 3 of our Mechanical Basis/Brainstem Series (Part 3)