Brian Tanaka, PhD

Brian S. Tanaka, PhD is an Associate Research Scientist studying voltage-gated sodium channels as therapeutic targets for pain. His current work centers on sodium channel pharmacology and nociceptor excitability, contributing to efforts developing non-addictive analgesic strategies for chronic pain.

Dr. Tanaka’s work has centered on defining how sodium channel mutations and pharmacological agents shape neuronal excitability in pain and seizure disorders. His doctoral work at the University of California, Irvine established the role of Nav1.6 in seizure resistance, including a collaboration with Allergan applying high-throughput two-electrode voltage-clamp screening to identify sodium channel blockers.

He then completed postdoctoral training with Stephen Waxman, MD, PhD at Yale School of Medicine, where he led electrophysiology efforts characterizing patient-derived iPSC sensory neuron models of pain, and demonstrated patient-specific, mechanism-based efficacy of lacosamide in a rare monogenic pain disorder.

Dr. Tanaka subsequently spent five years as a Research Scientist at Arvinas, where he built multi-electrode array and high-content imaging infrastructure for iPSC and primary neuron assays for target validation and compound screening for Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. His industry experience connects mechanistic ion channel biology to scalable assay development and therapeutic candidate de-risking, a perspective he now brings to pain drug discovery at Yale.

His research has produced more than 15 peer-reviewed publications in journals including Brain, Nature, The Journal of Physiology, The Journal of Neuroscience, and Neuron, along with numerous national and international conference presentations.