Areas of Specialty:

• Metabolism

• NAD

• Mitochondria

Joseph Baur, PhD

Joseph Baur, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. His laboratory studies the basic mechanisms that lead to aging, and how these can be influenced by nutritional or pharmacological interventions. He has published more than 150 papers, spanning topics in aging from the cellular level to whole organisms. Dr. Baur’s work has contributed to our understanding of telomere biology as well as the mechanisms of action for rapamycin, the most robustly validated longevity drug in mice. He is a leader in the field of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) metabolism and has developed mouse models and heavy isotope tracing methods adopted by many researchers in this area, in addition to co-discovering SLC25A51 as the mitochondrial NAD transporter. This work has provided critical insights in the mechanisms of action for nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide, which are now widely consumed as supplements. Recent work in the lab is focused on strategies to maintain muscle mass and metabolic health during weight loss induced by GLP-1 agonism. Dr. Baur’s broad goal is to identify molecular mechanisms that are amenable to nutritional or pharmacological manipulation and can be translated into therapies to prevent or treat age-related diseases in humans.