Ronan Lordan is the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Highlighted Trainee Author for the August 2023 issue. Currently, Dr. Lordan is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Garret A. FitzGerald at the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The JPET article that earned him the honor of being selected as Highlighted Trainee Author is titled: “Modulation of the Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination By NSAIDs” and is available here.
Dr. Lordan began his career as a biology and chemistry secondary school teacher. During his teacher training at the University of Limerick (UL), Ireland, he discovered his love for research and decided to pursue his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Ioannis Zabetakis. His doctoral studies focused on the identification and characterization of glycerophospholipids with antiplatelet and anti-inflammatory properties for pharmaceutical and nutritional applications. During his PhD, he was awarded an Ocean Frontiers Institute scholarship to conduct lipidomics research on fish oils at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Ronan also earned a master’s in teaching, learning, and scholarship and applied his skillset as a lecturer of nutrition, genetics, and physiology at the School of Natural Sciences and School of Allied Health at UL.
Currently, at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Lordan has expanded his mechanistic research into the fields of translational medicine and therapeutics as well as circadian biology. To address the urgent need to study whether nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) blunt the desired immune response of mRNA-based SARS-CoV2 vaccines, he teamed up with Dr. Carsten Skarke to pilot a longitudinal deep phenotyping effort in volunteers.
The anticipated impact of Dr. Lordan’s research is to establish a framework for a future clinical trial powered to definitively answer the question of whether NSAIDs do indeed interact with the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 immunization. Currently, his research uses sophisticated mouse model systems to investigate how time-specific bouts of physical activity can counter circadian dysfunction, how this is modulated by age, and how this could be clinically exploited.
Outside of the Lab, Ronan is an avid Munster and Irish Rugby fan and likes to play guitar and travel with his partner Samantha. He also enjoys social events and coffee with his lab mates.