Marfa, Texas Fourth Annual Translational Neuroscience Meeting October 18Th and 19Th 2018 Research Retreat Expanding Frontiers In
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Department of Pharmacology & Neuroscience Research Retreat Fourth Annual Translational Neuroscience Meeting Expanding frontiers in translational neuroscience October 18th and 19th 2018 Marfa, Texas Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience October 10th, 2018 Welcome to the fourth annual Research Retreat of the Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience in Marfa, TX. Our departmental research retreat continues to provide a unique opportunity for professional development through collegial interactions to inform about research accomplishments and ongoing scholarly activities of our department members, discuss and develop new collaborative research projects and grant applications, and reflect on our academic mission in the generation and dissemination of knowledge. We are excited to welcome two distinguished guests to our retreat. Dr. Kathryn Cunningham, Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Director of the Center for Addiction Research at UTMB Galveston, is a world leader in translational research and education on substance use disorders and related neuropsychiatric conditions. Dr. Quentin Smith, Professor and Dean of the School of Pharmacy at TTUHSC, has been named Senior Vice President of Research and is overseeing many exciting new initiatives and continued growth of the TTUHSC research enterprise. We look very much forward to their presentations and valuable feedback. This has been a very successful year for our department with several new federal and foundation grant awards and important contributions to medical and graduate education. We are very grateful for the continued support from the offices of the Dean of the School of Medicine and the Sr. VP of Research. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our staff for their invaluable help and support. A special thank you goes to Dr. Josée Guindon and Tiffany Denton for the organization of this event and the program booklet that contains abstracts of ongoing research projects by our departmental faculty. Please share your thoughts, ideas, plans and suggestions. Your active participation is essential for the success of our departmental research retreat and for the continued progress of our department. Thank you for all your valuable contributions. Volker Neugebauer, M.D., Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience Giles C. McCrary Endowed Chair in Addiction Medicine Director, Center of Excellence for Translational Neuroscience and Therapeutics th Thursday Oct 18 2018 Morning Individual travel to Hotel Paisano in Marfa 5:00 Welcome and Introduction - Drs. Neugebauer and Guindon 5:15 – 6:15 Distinguished Guest Lecture - Dr. Kathryn A. Cunningham: “Translating Neuropharmacology to Novel Therapeutics for Addiction” 6:30 – 8:30 Dinner together th Friday Oct 19 2018 8:00 – 9:00 Breakfast 9:00 - 10:25 Research Presentations - Ongoing Projects 9:00 - 9:10 Departmental Perspective - Dr. Neugebauer 9:10 - 9:25 Dr. Guangchen Ji (Faculty) 9:25 - 9:40 Dr. Takaki Kiritoshi (Postdoc, Neugebauer lab) 9:40 - 9:55 Mariacristina Mazzitelli (Ph.D. Student, Neugebauer lab) 9:55 - 10:10 Henry Blanton (Ph.D. Student, Guindon lab) 10:10 - 10:25 Dr. Khalid Benamar (Faculty) 10:25 - 11:00 Break 11:00 - 11:15 Dr. Madhu Narasimhan (Faculty) 11:15 - 11:30 Dr. Sambantham Shanmugam (Postdoc, Henderson lab) 11:30- 11:45 Dr. Susan E. Bergeson (Faculty) 11:45 - 12:00 Dr. Rui Wang (Postdoc, Lawrence lab) 12:00 - 2:30 Lunch Break 2:30 - 4:30 Research Presentations - Grant Proposals 2:30 - 3:10 Dr. Khalid Benamar (Faculty) 3:10 - 3:50 Dr. Josée Guindon (Faculty) 3:50 - 4:30 Dr. J. Josh Lawrence (Faculty) 4:30 - 5:30 Break 5:30 - 6:30 Dinner together 6:30 - 7:30 Distinguished Guest Lecture - Dr. Quentin Smith (SVPR) th Saturday Oct 20 2018 Morning Check out from Hotel Paisano (before noon) Distinguished Guest Speakers Dr. Kathryn A. Cunningham, Ph.D. Chauncey Leake Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology Director, Center for Addiction Research Vice-Chair for Research, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) Dr. Cunningham directs research and educational efforts embedded in a strong collaborative effort with chemists, cell biologists, preclinical and clinical scientists to discover key neuromolecular targets that may be exploited toward the goal of improved diagnostics and therapeutics for substance use disorders (SUDs). She has established strengths in neuropharmacology, the biology and pharmacology of G protein-coupled receptors, SUD neurocircuitry, drug discovery, and in vivo models of SUDs and related neural disorders. Dr. Cunningham has established a multitude of new cellular, behavioral and molecular tools to study SUD systems and to explore the biology of novel neuroprobes developed by our chemistry collaborators, with the promise as new SUD therapeutics. The National Institutes of Health has funded her research progress for over 25 years. Dr. Cunningham has generated seminal observations, new technologies and patents which are described in 150+ peer-reviewed publications and 30+ reviews and book chapters. She has cultivated and sustained a life-long commitment to fostering the career development of new scientists with over 45 mentees who have crafted successful careers in academia, industry and government. Her research and educational contributions have been recognized by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics-Astellas Award for Translational Pharmacology as well as the Marian Fischman Memorial Award and the Mentorship Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. Dr. Cunningham is Associate Editor of Nature Neuropsychopharmacology, AMSPC Councilor, ASPET Councilor, and an active educator, mentor and board member for community programs in the region. Dr. Quentin Smith, Ph.D. Senior Vice President for Research Professor and Dean, School of Pharmacy Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center After working more than 17 years in the National Institutes of Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he served as a tenured research investigator and section chief, Smith began at TTUHSC in 1997 as professor and chair of the newly formed Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy. He worked with the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 1999 to extend their training to the Amarillo campus with creation of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Program. In 2009, he became the senior associate dean for sciences of the School of Pharmacy, and in 2012 was appointed dean of the School of Pharmacy. Since joining TTUHSC, Smith has worked to build research and education in the School of Pharmacy. Though the school is only 20 years old, it has placed in the top third of Schools of Pharmacy nationally, ranked 16th in the nation by Graduate Programs.com, and 36 of 129 in U.S News and World Report. TTUHSC President Tedd L. Mitchell said in the last five years, the School of Pharmacy has more than doubled the number of graduates going into postgraduate residency training. Smith is an internationally distinguished researcher who, since leaving the NIH, has been awarded substantial extramural grant funding and led several international scientific conferences, including the Gordon Research Conference on Barriers of the Nervous System in 2012. He is a Fellow of the Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and received both the Award of Merit (1995) from the NIH and the meritorious manuscript award (2014) from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences. At TTUHSC, he received the Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Research Award, the Grover E. Murray Professorship, University Distinguished Professor and the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award. The graduating class of the School of Pharmacy recognized him twice as the Most Influential Professor. Dr. Ji Research Team Oral Presentation Fear extinction learning ability predicts pain behaviors Guangchen Ji1,2, Peyton Presto1, Vadim Yakhnitsa1, Takaki Kiritoshi1, Volker Neugebauer1,2 1Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, 2Center of Excellence for Translational Neuroscience and Therapeutics, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX Pain and fear may share neurobiological mechanisms such as plasticity in emotional networks that include the amygdala. The amygdala plays a key role in fear conditioning and has emerged as an important node of emotional-affective aspects of pain modulation. Impaired fear extinction learning, which involves prefrontal cortical control of amygdala processing, has been linked to conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sex differences in pain and disorders such as depression and anxiety are now being recognized. Here we tested the hypothesis that fear extinction learning ability can predict certain aspects of pain-related behaviors of rats and that these may be different in female and male rats. We correlated fear extinction learning in adult male and female rats with behavioral outcome measures (sensory thresholds, vocalizations, and anxiety-like behaviors) in models of acute arthritis pain (kaolin/carrageenan-induced knee joint arthritis) and chronic neuropathic pain model (spinal nerve ligation, SNL). Cued (auditory) fear conditioning, extinction, and extinction retention tests were conducted using two chambers. On Day 1 rats were habituated to context A followed by fear conditioning (2 US-CS pairs). On Day 2, rats were habituated to context B followed by extinction training (30 CSs). On Day 3, rats were