Dr. Sue Bodine
University of California, Davis
“Skeletal Muscle and the Key to a Healthy Life"

Sue Bodine, Ph.D. is at the University of California, Davis with Joint Appointments in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and Physiology and Membrane Biology. She also has a research appointment at the VA Northern California Health System. 

She received her Ph.D. in Physiological Sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles and began her academic career in 1989 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopedics at the University of California, San Diego. 

She spent seven years at UCSD, progressing to the rank of Associate Professor in 1995. In 1996 she left UCSD to take a position at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, New York. At Regeneron she became Director of the Muscle Biology Program and worked on the identification and development of targets to treat muscle atrophy. She left Regeneron in 2002 to become Director of Pharmacology at Elixir Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA; a start up company interested in the development of drugs to treat age-related diseases. Dr. Bodine came to UC Davis in 2003 as part of a recruitment effort to build a Muscle Biology Program in the College of Biological Sciences. 

Dr. Bodine is a Neuromuscular Physiologist whose general field of study is Skeletal Muscle Plasticity. Her primary research interests are in understanding the mechanisms that regulate skeletal muscle size under growth and atrophy conditions. Her lab is also interested in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms responsible for muscle’s adaptation to exercise and inactivity, and in determining the potential role for exercise in disease prevention and increased quality of life with aging. The long-term objective of the lab is to identify and develop therapies for the treatment of muscle atrophy under a variety of conditions.