Karl B. Thor, PhD, formed Dignify Therapeutics with colleagues form Urogenix Inc. in July 2013 and currently holds the position of Chief Scientific Officer.
Dr. Thor received his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where he trained under William (Chet) de Groat, Ph.D. and was supported by a PhARMA predoctoral fellowship. He held a National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellowship from the NIH at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, and was a Senior Staff Fellow in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the NIH. He joined Eli Lilly in the Neuroscience Division in 1990, where he discovered duloxetine (Yentreve) as a treatment for stress urinary incontinence. In 1998, he formed PPD GenuPro as a subsidiary of PPD Inc., where he discovered the clinical potential of dapoxetine as a therapy for premature ejaculation. These 2 drugs are the first agents to be submitted to regulatory agencies for their respective indications. In 2002, he founded Dynogen Pharmaceuticals Inc., a neuroscience-based drug discovery and development company targeting genitourinary and gastrointestinal diseases, where 2 clinical programs for overactive bladder and 2 clinical programs for irritable bowel syndrome were initiated. From 2006-2012, Dr. Thor co-founded and supervised Urogenix, a subsidiary of Astellas Pharma. From 1996 - 2008, Dr. Thor held adjunct positions at Duke University in the Department of Surgery/Division of Urology, where he was Co-Director of the Laboratory of Neurourology at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Surgical Research Services and received grant support from the NIH, Veterans Administration, and Christopher Reeves Foundation for studies of neural control of the lower urinary tract under pathological conditions including spinal cord injury. Dignify labs are currently developing a novel "on-demand, rapid onset, short-duration, drug-induced, voiding therapy" for persons who require lifetime, multiple daily, intermittent catheterization to void urine. Dignify is funded by the founders, private investors, the NIH/NICHD, NC Biotech Center, and NC Dept. Commerce.
Dr. Thor has published numerous articles and book chapters on CNS control of lower urinary tract function and holds several patents for methods of treating urinary bladder and sexual dysfunction. He is a member of the Society for Urodynamics and Female Urology, the International Continence Society, and the Society for Neuroscience. He served as a member of the FDA-PhARMA Industry Guidelines for Urinary Incontinence Trials in 1998. He has served as a peer reviewer for the NIH on the Urology Special Emphasis Study Section, the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Neurology B Study Section, and the Small Business Initiative Review Study Section. He has served on the World Health Organization’s International Consultation on Incontinence since its inception.