Chan Gao
I joined McGill and the MUHC as a practicing Physician-Scientist in 2020. I have a strong interest in chronic pain and bone disease and exploiting my expertise in preclinical model to investigate the pathogenesis of neurogenic heterotopic ossification (NHO) and neuropathic pain associated with spinal cord injury. The studies will provide new knowledge for development of early diagnostic tools and innovative treatments for patients with spinal cord injury / disease seen in clinical practice who are at risk of developing neuropathic pain and NHO. I have also established collaboration with pioneering institutions in biomedical informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, TN), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY), University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX), and University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI). Future clinical studies will use these and other biorepositories to identify clinical and genomic characteristics of patients with NHO and neuropathic pain to facilitate early identification of high-risk patients and development of individualized treatment.