Position Title
Professor of Pharmacology
Heike was born in Germany and grew up in Herford. After obtaining an MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences and an Approbation as a Pharmacist, which roughly corresponds to a PharmD in the US, but involves more chemistry, she earned a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the Christian Albrecht’s University of Kiel in 1998. Heike then trained as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of K. George Chandy at UC Irvine and came to UC Davis in 2003. She currently is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and the Discipline Lead for Pharmacology in the new I-EXLORE curriculum of the School of Medicine. Heike is passionate about the therapeutic potential of ion channel modulators and is part of teams trying to repurpose the KCa3.1 inhibitor senicapoc for Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.
The Wulff laboratory is focused on potassium channel pharmacology. This includes the use of Kv1.3 and KCa3.1 inhibitors for reducing neuroinflammation in various neurological diseases. Another area of interest in our lab are activators for small-conductance calcium activated potassium channels which could be useful for the treatment of substance use disorders.