Metabotropic Glutamate Receptors

Speakers

Organizers

Robb Brodbeck

Lundbeck Research

Dr. Brodbeck received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and his graduate degree from the department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Genetics at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He trained as molecular cell biologist, studying the intracellular transport of proteins. During his post-doctoral fellowship at the Washington university school of medicine, he studied GPCRs and the structure-activity relationship between ligand binding and functional activation. He continued his focus on GPCRs at Neurogen corporation, while studying the SAR of small molecule agonists and antagonists, and their effect on receptor function. More recently (2008), upon moving to Lundbeck Research USA, he continues his pursuit of small molecules which modulate the function of GPCRs, in an effort to discover novel drugs for CNS disorders.

Sid Topiol

Lundbeck Research

Dr. Topiol received his undergraduate degree from City College of New York in Physics and his graduate degree from NYU in Physical Chemistry. He trained as a theoretical quantum chemist, developing ab initio electronic structure methods for large systems. He then post-docked at Northwestern with Mark Ratner and Arthur Frost, and at Carnegie-Mellon with John Pople (Noble laureate.) He started his full time employment as an academic at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the Department of Pharmacology. This marked his initial entry into biopharma in the area of CNS drugs acting on GPCRs. At that time, work on 5HT and histamine receptors was his main focus. Moving from there to industry, he started Computer Aided Drug Design groups Berlex, and later at Sandoz/Novartis. He has worked on all aspects of Computer Aided Drug Design, ranging from ligand based methods to structure based. Where possible, he worked on soluble protein targets that were amenable to iterative structure based design in an interdisciplinary project environment. His Drug Descovery research covered various therapeutic areas including cardiovascular disease, oncology and others. More recently (2004) upon moving to Lundbeck Research, USA and he has come full circle with an emphasis on GPCRs. Over the years, he has also worked on chiral recognition, receptor theory and combinatorial chemistry.

Speakers

Mark F. Bear, Ph.D

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Mark Bear is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Picower Professor of Neuroscience in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Bear served as Director of The Picower Institute from 2007 to 2009. Prior to moving to MIT in 2003, Dr. Bear was on the faculty of Brown University School of Medicine for 17 years. After receiving his B.S. degree from Duke University, he earned his Ph.D. degree in neurobiology at Brown. He took postdoctoral training from Wolf Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, and from Leon Cooper at Brown. His honors include Young Investigator Awards from The Office of Naval Research (1988) and Society for Neuroscience (1993), and the Brown University Class of 2000 Barrett Hazeltine Citation for Teaching Excellence. He was elected as a Fellow of The Neurosciences Institute and Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives in 1999, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2005. In 2006, Dr. Bear was the recipient of the William & Enid Rosen Research Award for outstanding contributions to our understanding of Fragile X by The National Fragile X Foundation.

Bita Moghaddam, Ph.D

University of Pittsburgh

Bita Moghaddam, PhD is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of over 100 scientific papers and has extensive expertise in using animal models to study the cellular basis of cognitive constructs that are critical to psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia. She has a longstanding track record of involvement in successful translational research and is an effective educator and mentor. Her research has led to the discovery of the first non-monoamine targeting compound for treatment of schizophrenia. This novel therapeutic approach (targeting metabotropic glutamate receptors) was conceptualized by Dr. Moghaddam on the basis of her preclinical work. Her research has been funded continuously since 1991 including a MERIT award from that National Institute of Mental Health. She has been an active educator throughout her scientific career. Her education experience involves extensive didactic teaching of neuroscience to undergraduates, graduate students, medical students, and residence. She has been mentor to numerous pre and post-doctoral fellows. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards including the Efron award for excellence in research related to neuropsychopharmacology and the Paul Jansen Award for excellence in schizophrenia research. She serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards as well as national and local educational and service oriented committees.

Colleen Niswender, Ph.D

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Colleen Niswender obtained her Ph.D. in pharmacology in the lab of Dr. Ronald Emeson at Vanderbilt, studying the regulation of RNA editing in the mammalian central nervous system and characterization of molecular determinants regulating RNA editing events within the AMPA subtype glutamate receptor, GluR2, and the G protein-coupled 5HT 2C serotonin receptor. She then pursued postdoctoral studies with Dr. G. Stanley McKnight at the University of Washington, focusing on the study of Protein Kinase A signal transduction using recombinant mouse lines and genetically engineering mutations within the PKA enzyme. She joined the Vanderbilt Program in Drug Discovery in 2004 and has focused on the development of high throughput-compatible assays to search for ligands specific for G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) of the muscarinic and metabotropic glutamate receptor families. Currently, she directs the Molecular Pharmacology group within the Vanderbilt Program in Drug Discovery and is particularly interested in the concepts of functional selectivity and context-dependent pharmacology of allosteric modulators.

Jean-Philippe Pin, Ph.D

Université de Montpellier

Jean-Philippe Pin get his PhD in Molecular Biology in 1987 at the University of Montpellier 2 (France). He participated in the discovery of the metabotropic glutamate receptors and demonstrated synergism between various glutamate receptor subtypes for the activation of phospholipase A2. In 1990 he joined Steve Heinemann's laboratory at the Salk Institute as a post doctoral fellow. He cloned and characterized new mGlu receptor splice variants and demonstrated differences in their transduction properties. In 1992, he set up a research team working on the structure function relationship of mGlu receptors within a CNRS laboratory in Montpellier (France). Since 2003, he is head of the Molecular Pharmacology Department within the Institute of Functional Genomics (Montpellier, France). His research efforts are focused on the molecular and cellular dynamics of GPCRs, mostly mGlu and GABAB receptors, their regulation by intracellular proteins, and their modulation by new types of ligands. Thenks to the development of new technologies to study GPCRs, his studies led to new concepts in the GPCR field. These include that i) cell surface receptors can be activated by intracellular proteins; ii) GPCRs can be regulated by both negative and positive allosteric modulators; iii) dimerization is required for the activation of some GPCRs, and iv) GPCR dimers function in an asymmetrical way.

Jean-Philippe Rocher, Ph.D

Addex Pharmaceuticals

Jean-Philippe Rocher is head of the Core Chemistry at Addex. He has been working with the company since inception and was responsible for establishing its chemistry department. He was director of chemistry at Devgen NV, Gent, Belgium from 2001 to 2002 and From 1997 to 2001, Dr. Rocher was senior research scientist for GlaxoSmithKline KK in Tsukuba, Japan. From 1995 to 1997 Dr Rocher was guest scientist at Mitsubishi Pharma in Yokohama, Japan. He obtained his PhD at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Lyon, France in 1987.