Sterol Regulation of Ion Channels

Irena Levitan, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD in Biophysics and Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1994 and completed postdoctoral training at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Institute for Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the biophysical properties of endothelial membranes and sub-membrane cytoskeleton. Specifically, the studies of her group, which combine computational and experimental biophysical approaches, provided the first comprehensive structural insights into cholesterol regulation of K+ channels. In 2012, she was named a Guyton Distinguished Lecturer “for her quantitative and biophysical work on cholesterol modulation of ion channels and how this can affect integrated organ function. She and her group also discovered a paradoxical relationship between fluidity/deformability of the membrane and cell stiffness. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of AIMBE for “outstanding contributions to our understanding of lipid-ion channel interactions, cellular biomechanics and vascular dysfunction under dyslipidemia.