Dr. David Auerbach
Dr. David Auerbach
Department of Pharmacology
SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY 13210
Phone: 315-464-7952
Email: [email protected]
David Auerbach is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at SUNY Upstate Medical University, a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine-Cardiovascular Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
He completed his bachelors training at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY) with a major in Human Physiology and a minor in Law and Society. Next, he earned a masters from the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Case Western Reserve University. He conducted his doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Jose Jalife, a pioneer in cardiac arrhythmia mechanisms, at in the Department of Pharmacology at SUNY Upstate Medical University. He provided key insights into the substrates (structural heterogeneities) and triggers (alterations in ion channel expression and function) for the initiation of lethal cardiac arrhythmias. Subsequently, he completed a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Dr. Lori Isom, an expert in genetic sodium channel diseases. Dr. Auerbach demonstrated that in severe genetic forms of epilepsy, there are not only alterations in electrical function in the brain, but also in the heart, resulting in both seizures and cardiac arrhythmias. In 2014 Dr. Auerbach joined the University of Rochester Medical Center, where he developed expertise in clinical database analysis. He showed that patients with an inherited disease linked to cardiac arrhythmias also are at a high risk of seizures and epilepsy.
In 2019 he was very excited to return to SUNY Upstate to start his independent research program and build a productive, collegial, and all-around fun research team. In addition to graduate/medical teaching, and lectures at scientific meetings, he often speaks at patient advocacy group events. Through interactions with the families of patients with severe genetic diseases, he developed the passion and determination to advance the understanding of electrical diseases of both the brain (seizures) and heart (arrhythmias), and to understand the multi-system cascade of events that lead to Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy Patients (SUDEP).
Featured Publications:
Heart rate and autonomic biomarkers distinguish convulsive epileptic vs. functional or dissociative seizures Seizure. 2023 Oct; 111:178-186. doi: 10.1016/j.seizure.2023.08.015. Epub 2023 Aug 25. PubMed PMID: 37660533.
Multi-system Monitoring for Identification of Seizures, Arrhythmias and Apnea in Conscious Restrained Rabbits J Vis Exp. 2021 Mar 27;(169). doi: 10.3791/62256 PubMed PMID: 33843929.
Risk of cardiac events in Long QT syndrome patients when taking antiseizure medications Transl Res. 2018 Jan;191:81-92.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.trsl.2017.10.002. Epub 2017 Oct 20. PubMed PMID: 29121487; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5733703.
Genetic biomarkers for the risk of seizures in long QT syndrome Neurology. 2016 Oct 18;87(16):1660-1668. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000003056. Epub 2016 Jul 27. PubMed PMID: 27466471; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5085072.
Altered cardiac electrophysiology and SUDEP in a model of Dravet syndrome PLoS One. 2013;8(10):e77843. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077843. eCollection 2013. PubMed PMID: 24155976; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3796479.