Leading-edge knowledge about NALCN sodium leak channel

Dr. Stephan Pless trained as a biochemist and molecular biologist. His team at the University of Copenhagen works with various approaches, such as electrophysiology, fluorescence and chemical biology, to study the structure, function and pharmacology of ion channels and ion channel complexes, with a particular focus on the NALCN sodium leak channel.

His lab was able to show that NALCN is only functional when it forms a complex with three other proteins, FAM155A, UNC79 and UNC80 (Chua et al, Science Advances, 2020). This breakthrough enabled the first detailed functional characterisation of NALCN and led collaborators and other groups to obtain structures of the entire NALCN channelsome, along with mechanistic and pharmacological insight (Kschonsak et al, Nature, 2020 and 2022).