the
A Publication by The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Pharmacologist Vol. 57 • Number 1 • March 2015
Inside: ASPET Annual Meeting at EB 2015 2015 Election Results 2015 Award Winners
How Paul Janssen’s Drugs Saved the Chinese Terracotta Warriors
The Pharmacologist is published and distributed by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
Contents...
THE PHARMACOLOGIST PRODUCTION TEAM Prateeksha Nagar Suzie Thompson Rich Dodenhoff Judith A. Siuciak, PhD
3 Message from the President 4 New in 2015 5 2015 Election Results 6 2015 Award Winners 13 We Are ASPET 15 Meeting News 28 Feature Article: How Paul Janssen’s Drugs
COUNCIL
39 Science Policy 45 Education News 51 Journal News 52 Members in the News 53 Membership News 58 Division News 64 Chapter News 66 Meetings and Congresses
Chair, Program Committee Scott Waldman, MD, PhD
Saved the Chinese Terracotta Warriors
President Annette E. Fleckenstein, PhD President-Elect Kenneth E. Thummel, PhD Past President Richard R. Neubig, MD, PhD Secretary/Treasurer Paul A. Insel, MD Secretary/Treasurer-Elect Dennis C. Marshall, PhD Past Secretary/Treasurer Sandra P. Welch, PhD Councilors Charles P. France, PhD John D. Schuetz, PhD Margaret E. Gnegy, PhD Chair, Board of Publications Trustees Mary E. Vore, PhD
FASEB Board Representative Brian M. Cox, PhD Executive Officer Judith A. Siuciak, PhD The Pharmacologist (ISSN 0031-7004) is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3995. Annual subscription rates: $20.00 for ASPET members; $45.00 for U.S. nonmembers and institutions; $70.00 for nonmembers and institutions outside the U.S. Single copy: $20.00. Copyright © 2015 by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Inc. All rights reserved. Periodicals postage paid at Bethesda, MD. GST number for Canadian subscribers: BN:13489 2330 RT. ASPET assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by contributors to The Pharmacologist. Postmaster: Send address changes to: The Pharmacologist, ASPET 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3995.
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Message from
The President My Fellow Pharmacologists: We are fast approaching the ASPET Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology 2015, which will be held in Boston from March 28–April 1. As pharmacologists, we are energized by exploring new discoveries and transforming these into therapies. To foster this mission, I encourage you to join us at Experimental Biology 2015 (EB 2015). ASPET has planned an exciting program for our portion of EB 2015, including lectures from renowned scientists Jeffrey Benovic, Andre Terzic, Scott Waldman, Pieter Dorrestein, Namandjé Bumpus, and William Catterall. The program will not only include a wide variety of scientific symposia, but also education and career development sessions, a student and postdoctoral best abstract competition, and numerous mixers and networking events. The single EB 2015 registration fee gains you access to the programs of all six participating societies, as well as over thirty guest societies. I strongly recommend members to connect with ASPET staff in Booth 1154. Our enthusiastic team looks forward to meeting you and learning how to better serve the needs of the Society. Earlier this year, ASPET had the pleasure of announcing our 2015 Scientific Achievement Award winners. These awards are given to recognize accomplishments and contributions in specific areas of pharmacology or to the discipline in general. This year’s winners will be presented with their awards on Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 6:00 pm at the Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Room 107AB. The inaugural presentations of the David Lehr Research Award and the Reynold Spector Award in Clinical Pharmacology will also be held at the awards ceremony, so please remember to join us! Since 2009, ASPET members attending EB have given a day of volunteer service in local communities including New Orleans, Pasadena, San Diego, and Washington, DC. This year, ASPET’s Division for Behavioral Pharmacology is again sponsoring a volunteer opportunity involving Cradles to Crayons, an organization that provides children from birth through age twelve living in homeless or low-income situations with the essential items they need to thrive at home, at school, and at play. I hope you can all find time in your schedule to volunteer for this highly worthwhile event! I highly recommend that early career scientists join us and get involved in activities such as the Annual Division Meetings. These meetings present an important opportunity to have a voice in the future activities and directions of the division, introduce yourselves to the division leadership, and volunteer to get involved. I’m looking forward to seeing you in Boston!
Annette E. Fleckenstein
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New in 2015 Gearing Up for an Exciting 2015 It’s been a whole year since the launch of The Pharmacologist’s new look and we’ve accomplished a lot this past year, but get ready for an even more exciting 2015! As we move into the second year of publishing your re-vamped ASPET membership magazine, we’ve honed our articles and content to provide only the most interesting and important information for our members. Each issue provides you with upcoming deadlines, new initiatives and programs, and up-todate information from our membership, journals, science policy, education, and meetings departments. By now, you should be familiar with our feature stories in The Pharmacologist. These articles, by science writer Dr. Rebecca J. Anderson, focus on science stories with historical significance. This March issue features a story about the 2,200 year old Chinese Terracotta Warriors – one of China’s most famous cultural treasures – that began to face an increasingly serious mold problem and how Dr. Paul Janssen, a prestigious scientist and the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutical of Belgium, was able to save the ancient relics from the threat of decay. You won’t want to miss this article as well as the other feature stories due for publication later this year: “Blue bloods: How the lowly horseshoe crab is essential to injectable drug manufacturing;” “The ’sleepy’ sickness, Oliver Sacks, and the early days of L-DOPA;” and “Methotrexate, Sydney Farber, and the Jimmy Fund: The birth of modern cancer chemotherapy.” We are debuting a new e-flip reader format for The Pharmacologist with this issue. In addition to a downloadable PDF format, we are providing an easy-toread, user-friendly, e-flip format. Readers can flip through the pages of the issue – similar to flipping through a magazine – on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet; zoom in to read your favorite articles; crop articles for easy printing; and much more. We’d love to hear your feedback on this format for the online version of The Pharmacologist and whether you think it is useful and easy to read. Please email us your thoughts and ideas at pnagar@aspet.org. The March issue also features profiles of ASPET’s 2015 scientific award winners. Read about their research efforts and why they were chosen for our prestigious awards this year. Also important for this issue, you’ll find ASPET’s annual meeting program broken out by day, division meetings and activities, activities of interest for students and postdocs, social events, business meetings, and ancillary functions. Make your plans for EB this year using this highly informative programming section. In education news, students and young scientists will benefit from reading an article that focusses on how to make the most out of their EB experience. The article, contributed by our postdoctoral representative Uyen Chu, and members of the Mentoring and Career Development Committee, offers informative tips and techniques to prepare for the conference, present your research, attend various talks and events, and follow up with professional contacts after the meeting. We hope you enjoy this issue and all there is to come in 2015!
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2015 Election Results The 2015 ASPET election closed on January 15, 2015 with a promising turnout. Over 18% of our regular, postdoctoral, and retired members participated in the election to vote for the Society’s new leadership. The newly elected president-elect, secretary/treasurer-elect, and councilor will begin their terms on July 1, 2015. Congratulations to newly elected Council members Dr. David R. Sibley, Dr. Charles France, and Dr. Wayne Backes.
President-Elect
Secretary/Treasurer-Elect
Councilor
David R. Sibley, PhD Chief, Section on Molecular Neuropharmacology, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health
Charles France, PhD Professor, Departments of Pharmacology & Psychiatry, University of Texas Health Science Center
Wayne Backes, PhD Associate Dean for Research & Professor, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center
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2015 Award Winners ASPET presents several major awards on either an annual or a biennial basis. These awards are given to recognize accomplishments either in specific areas of pharmacology or contributions to the discipline in general. We are pleased to announce our 2015 Scientific Achievement Award winners. ASPET will present these awards on Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 6:00 pm at the Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony at the ASPET Annual Meeting during Experimental Biology 2015 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in Room 107AB.
John Jacob Abel Award in Pharmacology The John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology, named after the founder of ASPET, was established in 1946 to stimulate fundamental research in pharmacology and experimental therapeutics by young investigators. The award is presented annually.
Pieter Dorrestein, PhD University of California, San Diego, CA Pieter Dorrestein, PhD, an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, director of the Therapeutic Discovery Mass Spectrometry Center, and a co-director of the Institute for Metabolomics Medicine in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, is the 2015 recipient of the John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology. Dr. Dorrestein was trained by Tadgh Begley in the chemical biology of enzymes involved in vitamin biosynthesis and by Neil Kelleher and Christopher Walsh, who were co-sponsors of his NRSA postdoctoral fellowship, in top and middle down mass spectrometry on proteins that made small molecules of therapeutic value. Since his arrival at UCSD in 2006, Dr. Dorrestein has been pioneering the development of mass spectrometry methods to study the chemical ecological crosstalk between populations of organisms for agricultural, diagnostic, and therapeutic applications.
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In general, Dr. Dorrestein thinks about the application of the tools his lab develops and new functions of molecules that they discover. In the academic branch of his lab, he works on understanding the functional roles of specialized molecules and applies this information toward disease intervention such as the evaluation of newly discovered molecules as anti-infective strategies. Many of his tools and methodologies are also impacting industry. For example, his molecular networking tool is being used by industry to discover new pharmacologically related molecules. Molecular networking has led to the first crowd-sourced and social molecular analysis infrastructure at gnps.ucsd.edu, which is used by thousands of researchers from over 60 countries. His team and industry have jointly developed and implemented an assay that monitors the inflammatory status and potential of patients and how they respond to therapies using just a small amount of blood. This is being evaluated as a way to stratify patients in clinical trials. Similarly, he has a joint project with industry that aims to answer the question of how healthy commensal bacteria alter the immune system.
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Dr. Dorrestein has published over 140 articles and is the recipient of several awards, including the Beckman Foundation Young Investigators Award, The National Institutes of Health Exceptional and Unconventional Research Award (EUREKA), the Lilly Award in Analytical Chemistry, the Hearst Foundation Award, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America Award, and the Matt Suffness Award. He was named
a V-Foundation Scholar. In addition, he is a technological and research advisor/consultant for INDICASET, Janssen, Agraquest, Bayer, CUBIST, and Sirenas Marine Discovery. Dr. Dorrestein will deliver the John J. Abel Lecture on Monday, March 30, 2015 from 8:30 am–9:20 am in Room 107AB of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
Julius Axelrod Award in Pharmacology The Julius Axelrod Award in Pharmacology was established in 1991 to honor the memory of the eminent American pharmacologist who shaped the fields of neuroscience, drug metabolism, and biochemistry and who served as a mentor for numerous eminent pharmacologists around the world. This award is presented for significant contributions to understanding the biochemical mechanisms underlying the pharmacological actions of drugs and for contributions to mentoring other pharmacologists. ASPET assumed responsibility of the Julius Axelrod Award in Pharmacology from the Catecholamine Club in 2007. The award is presented annually.
Jean Rossier, MD, PhD Hôpital Sainte Anne, Paris, France Dr. Jean Rossier has been named the recipient of the 2015 Julius Axelrod Award in Pharmacology. From 1994 to 2012, Dr. Rossier was professor and chairman of the Department of Biology at ESPCI Paris Tech, a famous graduate school where Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radioactivity. Since 2012, he has worked at Hôpital Sainte Anne in Paris on translational research on imaging the brain in action. Dr. Rossier has made several major discoveries in neuropharmacology including his work on neuropeptides with Bloom, Guillemin, and Udenfriend of multiple opioïd peptides delineating several distinct neuronal systems involved in pain and reward. Turning his interests on GABAA receptors, he made the seminal observation that several inverse agonists facilitate performance in learning and memory tasks. This has led to the present development by the pharmaceutical industry of specific inverse agonists that are candidates for promnesic drugs. His most widely
technical contribution in neuroscience is the invention of single-cell RT-PCR after patchclamp. This unexpected marriage of molecular biology and physiology led to several discoveries. With single-cell RT-PCR, he has deciphered the molecular organization of various synaptic receptors. These key molecules are located at the contacts between neurons. He is now using RTPCR and a multidisciplinary approach combining electrophysiology, pharmacology, and imaging to characterize the diversity of neocortical interneurons and their roles in local blood flow control. This recent discovery of the role played by interneurons in controlling cerebral blood flow has shed light on the physiological mechanisms involved in functional NMR brain imaging, a technique widely used in the study of human brain function. Dr. Rossier will present the Axelrod Lecture at the 2016 ASPET Annual Meeting during Experimental Biology in San Diego, California, April 2–6, 2016. The 2015 Axelrod Lecture will be given by last year’s recipient, Jeffrey L. Benovic of Thomas Jefferson University, who will deliver a lecture titled “Arresting Developments in Receptor Signaling” on Sunday, March 29, 2015 from 2:00 pm–2:50 pm in Room 107AB at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
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Pharmacia-ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics The Pharmacia ASPET Award in Experimental Therapeutics recognizes and stimulates outstanding research in pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, basic laboratory, or clinical research that has had, or potentially will have, a major impact on the pharmacological treatment of disease. This award was originally established in 1969 as the ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics, but was renamed in 2002, when supported in perpetuity by an endowment from Pharmacia (now Pfizer). The award is presented annually.
L. Jackson Roberts, PhD Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN Dr. L. Jackson Roberts has been named the recipient of the 2015 Pharmacia-ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics. Dr. Roberts is a professor of Pharmacology and Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and his MD degree from the University of Iowa. He did an internal medicine residency at Washington
University in St. Louis, moved to Vanderbilt University where he did a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical pharmacology, and then joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1977. His initial research focus at Vanderbilt was on prostaglandins. However, his discovery, along with Jason Morrow, that prostaglandin-like compounds (isoprostanes) could be formed by a non-enzymatic free radical mechanism in 1990 led him to change his area of research to the field of free radical biology and medicine. His research emphasis is largely translational in nature, taking basic discoveries related to lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress/ injury in the laboratory and exploring their role in the pathogenesis of human disease.
Robert R. Ruffolo Career Achievement Award in Pharmacology The Robert R. Ruffolo Career Achievement Award in Pharmacology was established in 2011 in recognition of the contributions made to drug discovery and development by Dr. Ruffolo. The award recognizes the scientific achievements of scientists who are at the height of their careers (typically mid- to late-career) and who have made significant contributions to any area of pharmacology. The award is presented annually.
Heidi Hamm, PhD Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN Dr. Heidi E. Hamm has been named the recipient of the 2015 Robert R. Ruffolo Career Achievement Award in Pharmacology. Dr. Hamm
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is the Aileen M. Lange and Annie Mary Lyle chair in Cardiovascular Research and professor of Pharmacology at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She served as the chair of the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt from 2000–2013 where she oversaw an increase in the size of the department, as well as a quintupling of its funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during her tenure.
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Her research focuses on the structure and function of GTP binding proteins and the molecular mechanisms of signal transduction. Her laboratory has been at the forefront of developing our understanding of G protein coupled signal transduction for many years. Early studies in Dr. Hamm’s lab concentrated on visual signaling; she defined sites of rhodopsin interaction with transducin using synthetic peptides from Gα and went on to characterize G protein effector interactions in the same way. She then collaborated with Paul Sigler to determine the three-dimensional structures of heterotrimeric G protein αβγ subunits in their active and inactive conformations and in complex with the Gα subunit. She has extensively used peptides and minigenes, encoding small peptides or domains of signaling proteins to define protein-protein interaction and Gα and βγ dependent signaling pathways in cells. Minigenes that turn off one G protein pathway at a time in transfected cells showed that receptors that couple to multiple G proteins drive cell-specific responses via non-redundant interactions of multiple G protein pathways. Thus she has pioneered studies of functions of G protein subunits within the context of integrated
physiological systems and is applying mathematical modeling approaches to understand these networks of G protein signaling pathways. Dr. Hamm has organized a number of meetings including Keystone, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (ASBMB), and the Gordon Conference on Cyclic Nucleotides and Protein Phosphorylation. She was president of the ASBMB from 2006–2008. Dr. Hamm has served on the NIH Visual Sciences C study section, the NIH Reviewers Reserve, the Board of Scientific Counselors, NHLBI, and the NIH Peer Review Advisory Committee; she currently sits on the CSR Advisory Committee. She is on the Board of Directors of the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology. She has served on the editorial boards of The Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Pharmacology, and Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science. She is currently a member of the editorial board of The Journal Chemical Biology & Drug Design. She holds the Earl W. Sutherland, Jr. Endowed Chair of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
David Lehr Research Award The David Lehr Research Award is intended to extend funding for preclinical or clinical research directed toward improving human health. This award is made possible by an endowment to ASPET in 2014 from Mrs. Lisa Lehr in honor of her husband, the late Dr. David Lehr, former chair of the Department of Pharmacology for New York Medical College. The award is presented biennially.
Doo-Sup Choi, PhD Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN Dr. Doo-Sup Choi has been named the recipient of the first David Lehr Research Award. Dr. Choi is professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. He serves as the director of the Samuel C. Johnson Genomics of Addiction Program at Mayo Clinic. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry at Yonsei
University in Korea. He went on to receive a PhD in cellular and molecular biology at the Université L. Pasteur, IGBMC in Strasbourg, France. His postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology of addiction was completed in the Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a member of the Neurotoxicology and Alcohol Study Section of the National Institutes of Health (2012–2016). He is on the editorial board of Addiction Genetics, Journal of Addictive Behaviors Therapy & Rehabilitation, Journal of Medical Research and Practice, and PLOS ONE. He
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received a Young Investigator Travel Award from the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society (IBANGS) in 2009 and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from IBANGS in 2005. Dr. Choi has extensive experience in molecular and neuropharmacology of alcohol use disorders (AUD) and psychiatric disorders. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles including many high impact papers in journals such as Nature Neuroscience, Journal of
Clinical Investigation, Molecular Psychiatry, PNAS, Biological Psychiatry, Development, Journal of Neuroscience, and Neuropsychopharmacology. He will use the award to research adenosinemediated glutamate signaling in neuro-glial interaction and alcoholism. The purpose will be to study molecular mechanisms of adenosineregulated glutamate signaling, which is an essential component of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)striatal circuit and ethanol seeking behaviors.
Reynold Spector Award in Clinical Pharmacology The Reynold Spector Award in Clinical Pharmacology was established in 2014 by ASPET in recognition of Dr. Spector’s dedication and contributions to clinical pharmacology. The award recognizes excellence in research and/or teaching in clinical pharmacology. It is made possible by an endowment to ASPET from Dr. Reynold and Mrs. Michiko Spector. The award is presented biennially.
Scott A. Waldman, MD, PhD, FCP, FAHA Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA Scott A. Waldman has been named the first recipient of the Reynold Spector Award in Clinical Pharmacology. Dr. Waldman obtained his PhD from Thomas Jefferson University and his MD from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and Stanford University in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the laboratory of Ferid Murad, MD, PhD (Nobel 1998). He currently holds the endowed chair as Samuel MV Hamilton Professor of Medicine and is director of the Delaware Valley Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Program of the Kimmel Cancer Center, director of the Institute for Individualized Medicine, and chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics of Thomas Jefferson University.
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Dr. Waldman also directs the MD-PhD Program, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored Postdoctoral Training Program in Clinical Pharmacology, and the Training Program in Human Investigation (former NIH K30 Program) at Jefferson. He is a past member of the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology, a past Regent of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP), a past-president of ASCPT, and chair of the Scientific Program Committee and a council member of ASPET. He is a Fellow of the ACCP (FCP) and American Heart Association (FAHA). He is the editor-in-chief for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Biomarkers in Medicine, the deputy editor-in-chief for Clinical and Translational Science, and co-editor for Waldman and Terzic’s Pharmacology and Therapeutics: Principles to Practice. Dr. Waldman’s research interests focus on clinical pharmacology and translational medicine in the context of gastrointestinal malignancies and obesity. Dr. Waldman will present the Spector Lecture titled “Bench-to-Bedside Translation in Clinical Pharmacology: From Knowledge Generation to Healthcare Delivery” on Tuesday, March 31 from 8:30 am–9:20 am in Room 107C of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
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Torald Sollmann Award in Pharmacology The Torald Sollmann Award in Pharmacology was established in 1960 to commemorate the pioneering work of Dr. Torald Sollmann in the fields of pharmacological investigation and education. This award is presented biennially in odd-numbered years for significant contributions over many years to the advancement and extension of knowledge in the field of pharmacology.
James E. Barrett, PhD Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA Dr. James E. Barrett has been named the recipient of the 2015 Torald Sollmann Award in Pharmacology. Dr. Barrett is professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and founding director of the Drug Discovery and Development Program at Drexel University College of Medicine and of the Clinical and Translational Research Institute, Drexel University. He received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University followed by postdoctoral training in neuropsychopharmacology at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology. He has served on the faculty at the University of Maryland and at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences where he was a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Medical Psychology. Dr. Barrett joined Wyeth as vice president of Neuroscience Discovery Research following the merger with Lederle Laboratories where he had been director of Central Nervous System Research. Prior to his current position at Drexel University College of Medicine, he was senior vice president, chief scientific officer, and president of research at Adolor Corporation, a company focused on pain pharmaceuticals. He moved to Adolor after serving as president of research and development at Memory Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of drugs
for the treatment of debilitating central nervous system disorders. He has published more than 275 scientific articles, books, and abstracts in the areas of neuropharmacology, neurobiology, behavioral pharmacology, translational research, and neuroscience and serves on several editorial boards. He has served as president of the Behavioral Pharmacology Society and of ASPET. He served as the chair of the ASPET Board of Publication Trustees and has served on the Board of Directors for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, where he was a member of the Science Policy Committee and the Public Affairs Committee as well as chair of the Breakthrough Series in Science and Horizons in Bioscience series. Dr. Barrett recently became series editor for the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. He has received the Solvay-Duphar Award for Research on Affective Disorders, the George B. Koelle Award from the Mid-Atlantic Pharmacology Society for contributions to teaching and research, and, most recently, the P.B. Dews Lifetime Achievement Award for Research in Behavioral Pharmacology. Dr. Barrett is currently a member of the External Scientific Advisory Board, Preclinical Autism Consortium for Therapeutics. He is also the president of the Association of Medical School Pharmacology Chairs and was recently elected to the Executive Committee of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. His current research emphasis is in the area of pain, its comorbid pathologies, and on basic mechanisms and new therapeutics.
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Division for Drug Metabolism Early Career Achievement Award The ASPET Division for Drug Metabolism Early Career Achievement Award was established to recognize excellent original research by early career investigators in the area of drug metabolism and disposition and is presented biennially.
Namandjé N. Bumpus, PhD The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD Dr. Namandjé N. Bumpus has been named the recipient of the 2015 Division for Drug Metabolism Early Career Achievement. Dr. Bumpus received a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Michigan and performed thesis research in the laboratory of Dr. Paul F. Hollenberg where she investigated the effect of a naturally occurring cytochrome P450 (CYP) 2B6 mutation on the ability of the enzyme to become inactivated by known inactivators of the wild-type enzyme. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Eric F. Johnson at The Scripps Research Institute,
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Dr. Bumpus studied the regulation of CYP4A and CYP4F genes in mice. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences and the Department of Medicine – Division on Clinical Pharmacology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research program is focused on defining the contribution of drug metabolism to the pharmacology and toxicology of drugs used to treat and prevent HIV infection. She serves on the Drug Metabolism and Disposition editorial board and is a regular member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Xenobiotic and Nutrient Disposition and Action Study Section. Dr. Bumpus will present the Drug Metabolism Early Career Achievement Award Lecture on Monday, March 30 from 2:00 pm–2:50 pm in Room 109A at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. The award will be presented to her at that time.
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We Are ASPET Have you wondered what types of science professionals make up our Society? Take this word search puzzle to find out! Word search puzzles are fun and easy to play. Just look for the words hidden in the puzzle. You can find them up, down, diagonally, forward, or backward. And remember – a letter can be part of two or more words.
V T K L X I M Z P V B C X I F X B M E Z G Q M Y W Q D F N L T C H E M I C A L B I O L O G I S T W G W F U A S I A Q H H P X P D Q D D E Z S S N V O T E O Y I H R Q P D T G W C W B H T L I X R E V Z T K B G L M T X X J Z K X B T V X G P B O B E H A V I O R A L P H A R M A C O L O G I S T Y R C E R O L M C T S P I R X T P K L D O H N A O N I R G C O H E N S X S Q O H C O O M J E Q C H M S U C H I B U D F I I Y A S C K E F U Y T U U E G A D E B E T P I N T R C I S D E R M N N D L N Y L Z M R X I A H C M N X H I E O W E O D E R T Q L S I A Q C S G A I O E C O S F D A Q B P H W G E J S L K A W C M T N A I C L U O T E Y I I O L B M T U D L I Z H S L A I C T O J R O C B J R A O Q S C N S F H G S S E L S S P G O P S Y H K T N P D E T C L E C Q N K Y C H E I I X E Z S E E L J J L G I D I N T I G A T H E F I S D O S R D M I Y O X E E E I P H A R M D E N I Z T D N P S J S P M H N I S M X Y C D A H Y M Y L Z T Y J R X C E N T T T R P H Y S I O L O G I S T U F P L D S O I E I B X L J D B V E S C T M S O I F B H Z S S I I S R E H C R A E S E R O E S T H R Z B J T J J O T S I G O L O C A M R A H P U L T S I G O L O C A M R A H P O R U E N G U R H V Solved puzzle is on page 14
Neuroscientist Pharmacologist Toxicologist Behavioral Pharmacologist Biochemist Biomedical Scientist
Chemical Biologist Life Scientist Medicinal Chemist Molecular Biologist Neuropharmacologist Pharmaceutical Scientist
PharmD Pharmacist Physiologist Psychologist Educator Nobel Laureate
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We Are ASPET, puzzle from page 13 Answers:
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The Pharmacologist • March 2015
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Meeting News Schedule subject to change. Check the EB 2015 program book and mobile app for final schedule.
All locations at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC) unless otherwise noted.
Business Meeting and Opening Events Saturday, March 28, 2015 Meeting/Event
Room
Time
ASPET Business Meeting and Awards Presentation
107AB
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
SW Pre-Function Area
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
ASPET Opening and Awards Reception
Pharmacology Programming Saturday, March 28, 2015 Session
Room
Time
Speed Networking for Careers Beyond the Academic Bench Chairs: J.E. Clark and P. McGonigle
106
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
2015 Teaching Institute: Training Students for Teaching Careers Chairs: K. Karpa and K. Hardy
108
12:00 PM – 2:30 PM
109AB
2:45 PM – 5:15 PM
Graduate Student-Postdoctoral Colloquium: How to Get Started Chairs: A.T. Hanna-Mitchell and H. Gottlieb
■ Lectures
■ Divisional Programming March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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Sunday, March 29, 2015 Session
Room
Time
ASPET Presidential Symposium: Navigating the Future of Biomedical Research Chair: A.E. Fleckenstein
107AB
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
106
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
109A
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Emerging Roles of Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) in Drug Abuse and Mental Disorders Chairs: J. Li and G.M. Miller
108
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Ion Channel Drug Discovery – Advancements and Current Challenges Chairs: S.V. Kharade and M.F. Jarvis
107C
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
The Role of Protein-Protein and Protein-Membrane Interactions on P450 Function Chairs: W.L. Backes and J.P. Jones
109B
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Exhibit Hall
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Julius Axelrod Award In Pharmacology Lecture: Arresting Developments in Receptor Signaling Lecturer: J.L. Benovic
107AB
2:00 PM – 2:50 PM
Julius Axelrod Symposium: The Ins and Outs of G Protein-Coupled Receptor Signaling Chair: J.L. Benovic
107AB
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Westin-Grand Ballroom D
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Elucidating the Molecular Underpinnings of Behavior Using Pharmacological Knock-In Mouse Models Chair: R.D. Blakely
108
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Interindividual Variability in CYP-Mediated Drug Metabolism Chairs: H. Jeong and T.S. Tracy
109B
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
106
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
109A
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Bile Acids and Liver Disease in Pregnant Women and Neonates Chairs: L.M. Aleksunes and G.L. Guo Emerging Regenerative Therapies in Pulmonary Disease Chairs: Y. Liu and J. Rehman
ASPET Poster Presentations
Division for Pharmacology Education Programming: Active Learning: What’s Up with That Flipping Classroom Chair: J.L. Szarek
Nanotoxicology: Small Particles, Big Concern Chairs: J.S. Fedan and D.W. Porter Vascular Stiffness, A Novel Therapeutic Approach for Hypertension Chair: S.F. Vatner
■ Lectures
■ Divisional Programming
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
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Monday, March 30, 2015 Session
Room
Time
John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology Lecture: Creating the Facebook for Molecular Analysis Lecturer: P.C. Dorrestein
107AB
8:30 AM – 9:20 AM
Membrane Transporters at the Interface of Drug Interactions, Biomarker Monitoring, and Toxicity Chairs: L.M. Aleksunes and Y. Lai
109A
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Monoamines and Neurotrophins in Inflammatory Bowel Disease/ Irritable Bowel Syndrome Chairs: H.I. Akbarali and S. Szabo
109B
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
New Therapies for an Old Problem: The NINDS-Sponsored Anticonvulsant Screening Program Chairs: J.H. Kehne and K.S. Wilcox
107C
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Pharmacology of Neuronal Regeneration and Repair Chairs: J.S. Marchant and B. Grill
106
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Protein Trafficking and Drug Development Chair: P.M. Conn
108
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
107AB
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Exhibit Hall
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Division for Drug Metabolism Early Career Achievement Award Lecture: Drug Metabolism Considerations in HIV Treatment and Prevention Lecturer: N.N. Bumpus
109A
2:00 PM – 2:50 PM
Division for Drug Discovery and Development Symposium: Drug Development in Academic Centers Chairs: R.J. Leadley and R.W. Caldwell
107C
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
New Roles of Mitochondria in Vascular Function Chairs: D.W. Busija and P. Katakam
109B
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
ASPET Journal Symposium: Reproducibility in the Pharmacological Sciences: Moving the Discussion Forward Chair: D.R. Abernethy
107AB
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Drug Metabolism James Gillette Award and Platform Session: Biotransformation and Drug Transport Chairs: E.E. Scott and L.C. Wienkers
109A
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Postdoctoral Scientist Award Finalists Keynote: J.L Benovic
108
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Neuropharmacology Postdoctoral Scientist Award Finalists Keynote: B. Kieffer
106
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Psychomotor Stimulant Addiction: Lessons from Methamphetamine Chairs: R.I. Desai and M.A. Nader ASPET Poster Presentations
■ Lectures
■ Divisional Programming March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015 Session
Room
Time
Reynold Spector Award in Clinical Pharmacology Lecture: Bench-to-Bedside Translation in Clinical Pharmacology: From Knowledge Generation to Healthcare Delivery Lecturer: S.A. Waldman
107C
8:30 AM – 9:20 AM
“Can We Talk?” Strategies for Collaborative Pharmacology Education A.L. Gorman, J.S. Reuben and J.L. Szarek
Westin-Grand 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM Ballroom C
Biased GPCR Signaling in Drug Development: From Theory to Physiology Chairs: S. Rajagopal and A. Christopoulos
106
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
107AB
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
108
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Novel Therapeutic Targets and Preclinical Models of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Chairs: C.K. Jones and M. Nedelcovych
109B
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Systems Pharmacology: Enhancing Translational Research by Network and Pharmacodynamic Modeling Chairs: D.E. Mager and D.R. Abernethy
109A
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
The Human Microbiome: Systems Pharmacology Insights and the Potential for New Drug Discovery Chairs: R. Corriden and C. LaRock
107C
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Exhibit Hall
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
107AB
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Division for Behavioral Pharmacology Symposium: Sigma Receptors In Health and Disease Chair: H. Khoshbouei
109A
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Presynaptic Autoreceptors and Improved Treatments of Major Psychiatric Disorders Chair: S.Z. Langer
109B
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Structural and Dynamic Basis of Receptor-Ligand Interactions Chairs: E. Ortlund and S.F. Traynelis
106
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Toxicology Symposium: Pharmacogenetics and Drug Toxicity Chair: G.O. Rankin
108
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
107C
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
107AB
4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Cardiac Fibroblasts: Fair-Weather Friends in Myocardial Fibrosis and Repair Chairs: P.A. Insel and U. Meade New Technologies to Measure Mitochondrial Changes Chairs: C.C. Beeson and B.S. Cummings
ASPET Poster Presentations Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Trainee Showcase Chairs: L.E. See Hoe and J.M Schilling
Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology Young Investigator Awards Platform Session Chair: M.A. Holinstat Benedict R. Lucchesi Distinguished Lectureship in Cardiac Pharmacology: Regenerative Therapy for the Failing Heart Lecturer: A. Terzic Note: As of January 2015, the Division for Integrative Systems, Traslational and Clinical Pharmacology (ISTCP) changed its name to the Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology (TCP). The Pharmacologist • March 2015
■ Lectures
■ Divisional Programming
19
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 Session
Room
Time
Norman Weiner Lecture: Structural Basis for Function and Pharmacology of Voltage-Gated Sodium and Calcium Channels Lecturer: W.A. Catterall
107AB
8:30 AM – 9:20 AM
Structural Basis for Ion Channel Pharmacology Chair: W.A. Catterall
107AB
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
106
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Crossing the Line: Exploring the Borders between Physiological Redox Signaling and Oxidative Stress Chairs: T. Michel and M. Haigis
109A
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Moving Beyond Traditional Stimulants: Emerging Characteristics and Therapeutic Applications of Atypical Reuptake Inhibitors Chairs: L.P. Carter and B.E. Blough
107C
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
108
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
109B
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Exhibit Hall
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Common Pathways and Mechanisms of Chronic Pain and Opioid Addiction Chair: S.L. Ingram
Natural Products: Bioactive Molecules from Nature Chairs: B.T. Green, B.E. Blough and M.A. Holinstat Transporter-Mediated Drug Interactions: Clinical Significance and Predictions Chairs: M.J. Zamek-Gliszczynski and C. Lee ASPET Poster Presentations ■ Lectures
■ Divisional Programming
ASPET Booth #1154 Visit the ASPET booth in the Experimental Biology exhibit hall! Items for sale at “Shop ASPET” include scarves, ties, plush donkeys, and much more. Plus, pick up some free giveaways!
March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
20
All Division Meetings and Activities Schedule subject to change. Check the EB 2015 program book and mobile app for final schedule.
Friday, March 27, 2015 Division Meeting / Event
Room
Time
WestinRevere
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Room
Time
Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
WestinAdams
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Division for Drug Metabolism Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Executive Boardroom
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Division for Drug Discovery and Development Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Bulfinch
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Westin-Grand Ballroom D
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
ASPET Council of Division Chairs (By invitation only)
Sunday, March 29, 2015 Division Meeting / Event
Division for Pharmacology Education Programming: Active Learning: What’s Up with That Flipping Classroom Chair: J.L. Szarek
Monday, March 30, 2015 Division Meeting / Event
Room
Time
Division for Behavioral Pharmacology Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
WestinAdams
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Division for Neuropharmacology Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
WestinBulfinch
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Division for Pharmacology Education Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Executive 7:30 AM – 9:30 AM Boardroom
Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
WestinAdams
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
WestinDouglas
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Division for Toxicology Executive Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Frost Boardroom
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
107C
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Drug Discovery and Development Symposium: Drug Development in Academic Centers Chairs: R.J. Leadley and R.W. Caldwell The Pharmacologist • March 2015
21
Division for Drug Metabolism James Gillette Award and Platform Session: Biotransformation and Drug Transport
109A
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Postdoctoral Scientist Award Finalists Keynote: J.L Benovic
108
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Neuropharmacology Postdoctoral Scientist Award Finalists Keynote: B. Kieffer
106
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Neuropharmacology Annual Meeting (Open to all division members)
106
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Division for Drug Discovery and Development Annual Meeting (Open to all division members)
107C
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Annual Meeting (Open to all division members)
108
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Division for Drug Metabolism Annual Meeting (Open to all division members)
109A
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Division for Pharmacology Education Annual Meeting (Open to all division members)
109B
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Divisions for Behavioral Pharmacology and Neuropharmacology Joint Mixer
Westin-Lewis Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Divisions for Drug Discovery and Development; Translational and Clinical Pharmacology; and Pharmacology Education Joint Mixer
Westin-Carlton Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Mixer
Westin6:30 PM – 8:00 PM Burroughs Room
Tuesday, March 31, 2015 Division Meeting / Event
Room
Time
ASPET Division for Cancer Pharmacology Discussion (By invitation only)
WestinBulfinch
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology: Meet the Experts Lunch: Benchside-to-Bedside Research (By invitation only)
WestinDouglas
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
WestinExecutive Boardroom
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
107AB
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Division Communications Officer’s Meeting (By invitation only) Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Trainee Showcase
March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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Division for Behavioral Pharmacology Symposium: Sigma Receptors In Health and Disease Chair: H. Khoshbouei
109A
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
108
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
107C
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
107AB
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
107C
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
108
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
109A
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Mixer
WestinCommonwealth Ballroom B
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Divisions for Drug Metabolism and Toxicology Joint Mixer
WestinCommonwealth Ballroom A
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Division for Toxicology Symposium: Pharmacogenetics and Drug Toxicity Chair: G.O. Rankin Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology Young Investigator Awards Platform Session Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Annual Meeting (Open to all division members) Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology Annual Meeting (Open to all division members) Division for Toxicology Annual Meeting (Open to all division members) Division for Behavioral Pharmacology Annual Meeting (Open to all division members)
Activities of Interest for Students and Postdocs Schedule subject to change. Check the EB 2015 program book and mobile app for final schedule.
Friday, March 27, 2015 Session / Event Give a Day of Service to Boston at EB 2015
Location
Time
Cradles to Crayons
10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Saturday, March 28, 2015 Session / Event Speed Networking for Careers Beyond the Academic Bench Chairs: J.E. Clark and P. McGonigle Graduate Student-Postdoctoral Colloquium: How to Get Started Chairs: A.T. Hanna-Mitchell and H. Gottlieb
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
Room
Time
106
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
109AB
2:45 PM – 5:15 PM
23
Sunday, March 29, 2015 Session / Event
Room
Time
ASPET Diversity Mentoring Breakfast (By invitation only) Keynote: J.S. Reuben
Westin-Faneuil Room
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Division for Pharmacology Education Programming: Active Learning: What’s Up with That Flipping Classroom Chair: J.L. Szarek
Westin-Grand Ballroom D
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
ASPET Student/Postdoc Best Abstract Competition
Westin-Galleria Room
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
ASPET Student & Postdoc Mixer
Westin-Harbor Ballroom III
8:30 PM – 11:00 PM
Session / Event
Room
Time
Division for Drug Metabolism James Gillette Award and Platform Session
109A
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Postdoctoral Scientists Award Finalists Keynote: J.L Benovic
108
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Neuropharmacology Postdoctoral Scientist Award Finalists Keynote: B. Kieffer
106
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Westin-Lewis Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Westin-Carlton Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Mixer
Westin-Burroughs Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Young Experimental Scientists Y.E.S. Mixer
Westin-Galleria
9:00 PM – 11:30 PM
Monday, March 30, 2015
Divisions for Behavioral Pharmacology and Neuropharmacology Joint Mixer Divisions for Drug Discovery and Development; Translational and Clinical Pharmacology; and Pharmacology Education Joint Mixer
Don’t forget to attend your Division’s Annual Meeting! March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015 Session / Event
Room
Time
ASPET Networking Walk Weather permitting
Westin-Alcott Room
7:00 AM – 9:00 AM
“Can We Talk?” Strategies for Collaborative Pharmacology Education Chairs: A. Laurel Gorman, Jayne S. Reuben, and John L. Szarek
Westin-Grand Ballroom C
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
107AB
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM
107C
3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Mixer
WestinCommonwealth Ballroom B
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Divisions for Drug Metabolism and Toxicology Joint Mixer
WestinCommonwealth Ballroom A
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Trainee Showcase Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology: Young Investigator Awards Platform Session
Social Events Schedule subject to change. Check the EB 2015 program book and mobile app for final schedule.
Friday, March 27, 2015 Event
Location
Time
Cradles to Crayons
10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Room
Time
SW Pre-Function Area
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Room
Time
ASPET Diversity Mentoring Breakfast (By invitation only) Keynote: J.S. Reuben
Westin-Faneuil Room
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
ASPET Student/Postdoc Best Abstract Competition
Westin-Galleria
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Westin-Commonwealth Ballroom B/C
7:30 PM – 11:00 PM
Westin-Harbor Ballroom III
8:30 PM – 11:00 PM
Give a Day of Service to Boston at EB 2015
Saturday, March 28, 2015 Event ASPET Opening and Awards Reception
Sunday, March 29, 2015 Event
Board of Publications Trustees Joint Editorial Boards Dinner (By invitation only) ASPET Student & Postdoc Mixer
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
25
Monday, March 30, 2015 Event
Room
Time
Westin-Faneuil Room
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Divisions for Behavioral Pharmacology and Neuropharmacology Joint Mixer
Westin-Lewis Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Divisions for Drug Discovery and Development; Translational and Clinical Pharmacology; and Pharmacology Education Joint Mixer
Westin-Carlton Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Mixer
Westin-Burroughs Room
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Young Experimental Scientists Y.E.S. Mixer
Westin-Galleria
9:00 PM – 11:30 PM
ASPET Past Presidents’ Dinner (By invitation only)
Tuesday, March 31, 2015 Event
Room
Time
Westin – Meet at the Concierge Desk in Lobby
7:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Mixer
Westin-Commonwealth Ballroom B
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Divisions for Drug Metabolism and Toxicology Joint Mixer
Westin-Commonwealth Ballroom A
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
ASPET Networking Walk Weather permitting
ASPET Meetings Schedule subject to change. Check the EB 2015 program book and mobile app for final schedule.
Friday, March 27, 2015 ASPET Meeting
Room
Time
ASPET Council Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Douglas Room
12:00 PM – 6:00 PM
ASPET Council of Division Chairs (By invitation only)
Westin-Revere
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
ASPET Meeting
Room
Time
ASPET Business Meeting and Awards Presentation
107AB
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Saturday, March 28, 2015
March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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Sunday, March 29, 2015 ASPET Meeting
Room
Time
The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Associate Editors Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Douglas Room
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
ASPET Board of Publications Trustees Meeting (By invitation only)
Westin-Douglas Room
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Room
Time
Westin-Douglas Room
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Westin-Executive Boardroom
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
WestinBulfinch
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Westin-Executive Boardroom
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Monday, March 30, 2015 ASPET Meeting Molecular Pharmacology Editorial Board Meeting (By invitation only) ASPET/BPS Pharmacology Research & Perspectives Editorial Board Meeting (By invitation only) Pharmacological Reviews Editorial Board Meeting (By invitation only) Mentoring and Career Development Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
Did You Know? In 2014 ASPET awarded… • O ver $35,000 in support of ASPET Scientific Achievement and Best Abstract Awards • Over $180,000 in support of ASPET symposium speakers at EB 2014 • Over $200,000 in individual and institutional summer undergraduate fellowships • Over $230,000 in travel awards for members to attend EB 2014 and IUPHAR WCP 2014 meetings In total ASPET gave back over $640,000 to support our members who have advanced the field of pharmacology. To learn about all our membership benefits, visit: www.aspet.org/membership/benefits/
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015 ASPET Meeting
Room
Time
Westin-Douglas Room
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Westin-Frost
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Westin-Bulfinch
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Westin-Executive Boardroom
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Westin-Adams
7:30 PM – 10:30 PM
Westin-Hale Room
Sunday, March 29 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Private Event – See invitation for location
Tuesday, March 31 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Drug Metabolism and Disposition Editorial Board Meeting (By invitation only) ASPET Nominating Committee Meeting (By invitation only) ASPET Science Policy Committee Meeting (By invitation only) ASPET/BPS Pharmacology Research & Perspectives Management Committee Meeting (By invitation only) ASPET Program Committee Meeting (By invitation only)
Ancillary Functions at EB 2015 AMSPC Reception Catecholamine Club Dinner Michigan State University Pharmacology and Toxicology Reception
Westin-Commonwealth Tuesday, March 31 Ballroom C 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
PhRMA Foundation Reception
Private Event – See invitation for location
Monday, March 30 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Westin-Marina Ballroom II
Saturday, March 28 9:00 PM – 11:30 PM
University of Michigan Department of Pharmacology and Department of Biological Chemistry Social Hour
ASPET Guest Societies Participating at EB 2015 Behavioral Pharmacology Society (BPS) Global GI Club Business and Scientific Meeting
Separate registration required. See BPS confirmation for location
Friday, March 27 – Saturday, March 28
Westin-Faneuil Room
Sunday, March 29 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Follow ASPET’s Official Meeting Bloggers KatieSci: sicknessisfascinating.blogspot.com Elizabeth Sandquist: everydaybiochemistry.wordpress.com Don’t forget to also follow ASPET’s tweets and Facebook posts. Use #expbio and #ASPET.
March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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How Paul Janssen’s Drugs Saved the
Rebecca J. Anderson
The Chinese Terracotta Army, dating from approximately the late third century BCE, was discovered on March 29, 1974 to the east of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province, China. Photo: Shutterstock The Pharmacologist • March 2015
29
Chinese museum officials gazed with dismay at their priceless army of ancient statues. For 22 centuries, the terracotta warriors had been protected and preserved in the soil of China’s Yellow River valley (1). Now, less than 20 years after these old soldiers emerged from their subterranean fortress, many of them had become infected and were suffering from a mysterious rash (2). Local archeologists suspected the warriors’ moldy rash was due to fungi, but they lacked specialized laboratory equipment and had only limited expertise to diagnose and treat the ailment. The detective who stepped forward to solve this mystery and thwart an archeological catastrophe was an unlikely hero: a businessman, physician, and scientist who made and sold drugs. And most unlikely of all, he was Belgian. Next to Hercule Poirot, Paul Janssen was probably the most famous Belgian of the 20th century, and the two compatriots had much in common. Poirot and Janssen both regularly exercised their little grey cells, saw clues that others missed, and pragmatically followed the trail of evidence. They traveled widely, often downplayed their own expertise in deference to colleagues, and chalked up a consistent record of success. But there was one big difference. Whereas Hercule Poirot existed only in the fertile imagination of Agatha Christie, Paul Janssen was real. A little boy who grew up in war-torn Belgium, Paul had many interests, but his journey leading to the ancient Chinese warriors was anything but direct.
A Pharmaceutical Heritage Paul Janssen was raised in a family whose business was drugs. His father, Constant Janssen, had given up a successful medical practice in 1938 to devote full time to developing his own pharmaceutical business in the small Belgian town of Turnhout (2-4). Constant was the Belgian distributor of medicinal products from the Hungarian company, Richter. The product line consisted mainly of tonics, stimulants, vitamin preparations, and organic extracts. German occupation of Belgium during World War II and the murder of Gedeon Richter (the Hungarian company’s owner) by the Nazis forced Constant to increase production of his own products under the
Janssen label (3). These included repackaging and distributing generic penicillin and sulfonamides, which were increasingly in demand after the war. Paul’s mother, Margriet Fleerakers, served as office manager and also supervised the production line, including quality control (3). Paul finished high school in 1943. To avoid forced labor in the German factories, he secretly enrolled in college (at the age of 16) with the help of his uncle, Emiel Janssen (3). The 12 Jesuit teachers at the Faculté Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium, offered intensive courses in physics, biology, philosophy, and chemistry to a handful of students, including Paul, without the knowledge of the German occupiers (2, 3). Paul received his Bachelor of Natural Sciences degree in 1945 and began studying medicine at Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium (2-4). His medical studies and a visit to the Dutch pharmaceutical company Organon strengthened his interest in drug research and introduced him to the concept of structure-activity relationships (2).
The detective who stepped forward to solve this mystery and thwart an archeological catastrophe was an unlikely hero: a businessman, physician, and scientist who made and sold drugs. Around the Janssen dinner table, the drug business was a frequent topic of conversation. Paul was impressed by the European pharmaceutical giants Roche and Organon and urged his reluctant father to innovate and modernize the family’s Richter-Janssen product line (2). To gain a better understanding of world-class pharmaceutical research, Paul took a six-month leave during his second year of medical school and visited medicinal chemistry and pharmacology laboratories in the United States (2-4). He covered his expenses, in part, by playing competitive chess in “pick-up” matches as he traveled across the country (3). Paul first visited Harry Gold, the well-known pharmacologist at Cornell Medical School, and then Edwin Cohn at Harvard. He also attended lectures
March 2015 • The Pharmacologist
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third floor of the Richter-Janssen company’s building in Turnhout. Paul was 27 years old. As Paul later recalled, he started his research “with a small group of researchers and an equally small budget, to make new compounds that could be synthesized and purified with simple methods and equipment and which could be pharmacologically tested at minimal expense” (5). His goal from the beginning was to make his research self-sustaining: to quickly produce medically important compounds on which he could secure patents, license them to large drug companies, and use the income to recruit new associates and expand the scope of his research (2, 3). “Things had to succeed. I did what I thought had to be done: finding something that could be patented. And things had to be simple, otherwise they would get too big and take too long, and become too expensive…It was all very primitive, but…from day one, we lived off our income” (2).
Photo: Copyright Janssen Pharmaceutica (2015)
by Carl Pfeiffer, a well-known pharmacologist at the University of Chicago, and took a summer biochemistry course at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (2, 3). He rounded out the summer by visiting Searle, Upjohn, and Lederle to observe commercial pharmacology research and returned to Belgium in time to take his academic examinations, which he passed with honors (3). Paul completed his clinical training at Ghent University and received his MD in 1951, graduating magna cum laude (3). He also stayed engaged with his family’s business. One Sunday afternoon in 1951, he used his knowledge of pharmacology and pharmaceutics to concoct his first drug product. Using a popular German analgesic as a reference, he combined acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine to create Perdolan. His father marketed the product, which became the most widely used analgesic in Belgium (2). Paul fulfilled his compulsory military service at a base near Cologne, where the Belgian army formed part of the post-war allied forces (2-4). His duties as an army physician were light, and he continued his studies at the University of Cologne’s Pharmacological Institute, where he synthesized his first molecules: simple chemical reactions to produce amines (2). From 1951 to 1954, he gained additional medical training in Paris, Vienna, and Heidelberg, made a number of trips to Oxford, London, and Stockholm, and visited the United States for the second time (3). After his military service, Paul became a parttime research assistant at the Pharmacological and Therapeutic Institute in Ghent under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Prof. Corneille Heymans. In 1956, Paul was awarded his teaching certificate and a PhD in chemical pharmacology from the University of Ghent, defending a thesis on the pharmacology of propylamines (2-4).
Joining the Family Business, With a Twist Instead of pursuing an academic career, Paul wanted to establish an independent research facility dedicated to developing new drugs (3, 4). Constant Janssen was not interested in research himself, but he wisely did not discourage his son’s ambitions. In 1953, he gave Paul 50,000 Belgian francs ($1000) in start-up funds, and Paul set up a laboratory on the
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
Dr. Paul Janssen in his lab.
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For pharmacological assessment that was beyond their simple in vitro and in vivo assays, Paul and his team sent their compounds to David K. de Jongh, a physician in Amsterdam who, like Paul, had studied with Prof. Heymans at Ghent. To distinguish those compounds from the compounds generated in his own laboratory, De Jongh assigned Paul’s compounds an R number (for Richter) (2, 3). The Janssen company subsequently adopted this nomenclature, Paul later explaining that the R stood for research (5). Paul’s small laboratory initially investigated treatments for painful muscle spasms. The fifth compound he synthesized was ambucetamide (R5), which relaxed uterine smooth muscle. His father’s company combined R5 with Perdolan and in 1955 marketed the combination product as Neomeritine for menstrual pain (2, 3).
Success Comes Rapidly In 1954, the laboratory produced isopropamide (R79), a long-acting anticholinergic drug that inhibited stomach and intestinal smooth muscle spasms and blocked gastric secretion. Following his business plan, Paul licensed the drug to Smith, Kline, and French (now GlaxoSmithKline). The royalties enabled Paul to expand his laboratory and carry out more research. Paul noted with interest the popular opiate drug meperidine, a synthetic morphine analog that was prescribed for moderate pain and for diarrhea (3). After synthesizing and testing several hundred meperidine analogs, Paul’s team noted a lack of correlation between the compounds’ analgesic and constipating properties (5). In 1956, his chemists succeeded in synthesizing diphenoxylate (R1132), a potent antidiarrheal compound that had low abuse potential, and Paul sought a licensing partner. G. D. Searle & Company was initially hesitant to license the product. Despite the recommendation of I. C. Winter, Searle’s highly respected medical director, the company’s business leaders were skeptical. Paul was a young, unknown doctor from a small European country (2). During the negotiations, a cousin of Jack Searle, the company’s vice president and general manager, coincidently suffered a bout of severe diarrhea. Dr. Winter administered diphenoxylate, and Jack’s cousin made a speedy recovery. Searle (now part of Pfizer) soon licensed the Belgian “wonder
drug” and marketed it in the US as Lomotil®. In the 1960s, Lomotil was included in the drug supplies that accompanied the Apollo astronauts to the moon (2, 3). By 1957, Paul had assembled a staff of 70 coworkers, and they had outgrown the lab space in his father’s Turnhout factory. They moved to new laboratory quarters in Beerse, Belgium, a campus that could accommodate long-term expansion. The following year, Paul’s research laboratories merged with his father’s company to form Janssen Pharmaceutica, and Paul became president and director of research (3, 4). He was 32 years old.
Velvet Glove, Steely Fist Paul built the company’s research reputation by tapping the strengths of his people (2, 3). He had both a natural authority and a deep respect for his coworkers – scientists, lab technicians, and administrative staff alike. He kept the organizational structure flat, directly stimulating, encouraging, and nurturing each person’s creativity and innovative skills. Under his guidance, the younger scientists grew into well-known experts in the pharmacological treatment of a wide variety of diseases. Everyone
...he could sense opportunity where others might see only a failed experiment. called him Dr. Paul (2). A journalist for the industry publication Scrip Magazine (reporting in a 1985 article) described the Janssen organization as a collective of equals. “If a researcher wants to do something new, then all he or she needs to do is send a note to Dr. Janssen describing his or her intentions and motivations. Paul Janssen nearly always agrees. And if he doesn’t, he just talks to the researcher directly to discuss things further” (2). During his daily walkabouts, Dr. Paul engaged in lively discussions of chemistry, pharmacology, and clinical medicine. He wanted to know what the researchers were doing, the details of their results – good and bad – and their strategies for solving problems (2). Everywhere he went and of everyone he met, he asked the same question, “Anything new?”
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He had an insatiable curiosity, but whether intentional or not, this simple question prompted extraordinary responses. His researchers knew they would be asked every day and stretched for fresh ideas – or at least thought hard about what they were doing. Dr. Paul’s simple question constantly reminded them that research was all about finding something new (2). Dr. Paul had an uncanny ability to amalgamate in his head all the fragments of chemistry, pharmacology, and clinical results spewing from his laboratories, and he could sense opportunity where others might see only a failed experiment. As director of research, he personally set the direction of each research project. Those projects always started with two things: a carefully reasoned concept – often inspired by unexpected laboratory observations – and a compound whose chemical structure served as a reference for targeted synthesis.
Cyclists and Psychosis Dr. Paul’s observations and inspiration were not limited to the laboratory (6). One day while walking along a street in Belgium, his scientific curiosity was piqued by a group of competitive cyclists. Racing cyclists at that time often used high doses of amphetamine to gain a competitive advantage. However, with chronic amphetamine use, the cyclists developed taut facial expressions that progressed to grimaces. They also exhibited agitated behavior that resembled the signs and symptoms of patients with paranoid schizophrenia (2, 4).
Dr. Paul was skilled at recognizing core chemical structures that were biologically active and exploiting them to create a wide variety of therapeutic products. The similarity between the cyclists’ behaviors and clinical psychosis led Dr. Paul to speculate that an amphetamine antagonist might be useful to treat psychotic symptoms (2). His battery of simple laboratory tests included an assessment of druginduced changes in animal behavior associated with tranquilizers (such as catatonia and sedation).
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After the success of Lomotil, the Janssen chemists sought even greater separation between the neurological and constipating effects of opiates. They synthesized a series of meperidine analogs with larger and larger chemical substituents. “However,” Paul admitted, “we pushed our luck too far” (5). Mice injected with these bulky molecules exhibited less of the typical opiate-like behavior (e.g., morphine-induced excitement, mydriasis, and insensitivity to pain). Instead, the mice appeared tranquilized; they became progressively calm, sedated, and slightly catatonic. Up to this time, reserpine, chlorpromazine, and their analogs were the only compounds that produced “tranquilizing” effects in Janssen’s pharmacological screening tests (5). The bulky meperidine analogs were an anomaly: compounds with tranquilizing properties but chemically unrelated to either reserpine or chlorpromazine. Dr. Paul directed his researchers to pursue this interesting series of compounds further. After synthesizing 438 analogs, the Janssen chemists produced R1625 in 1958. Better known as haloperidol, R1625 was devoid of morphine-like properties and was several times more potent than chlorpromazine as a tranquilizer. It was also faster and longer acting and had almost no antiadrenergic or other autonomic effects associated with chlorpromazine (5). Haloperidol was the most active neuroleptic yet discovered and became the prototype for a new class of psychoactive agents, the butyrophenones. Janssen Pharmaceutica subsequently introduced 10 butyrophenone neuroleptics (including droperidol, R4749, and spiperone, R5147) for human or veterinary use (3, 5). Through further modifications of the chemical structure, the Janssen chemists also produced the long-acting neuroleptic, pimozide (R6238) (2, 4). Despite the side-tracked research prompted by the butyrophenones, Dr. Paul continued his search for analgesics that were more potent than meperidine. Meperidine is hydrophilic and does not easily cross the blood–brain barrier. The Janssen chemists increased the lipophilicity of the molecule, and after a series of additional chemical modifications, they synthesized fentanyl (R4263) in 1960. It was 100 times more potent than morphine. Because of its rapid onset, short half-life, and minimal effect in
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depressing the heart, fentanyl was widely used by anesthesiologists (2, 3). At the other end of the meperidine spectrum, the Janssen chemists produced loperamide (R18553), which was devoid of analgesic activity because it does not cross the blood–brain barrier. Screening assays showed that loperamide was highly effective in inhibiting gut motility. Marketed as an antidiarrheal drug, loperamide (Imodium®) became one of Janssen’s most well-known products (2, 6). Janssen Pharmaceutica continued to grow: 377 employees and affiliated companies in Germany, Holland, the Belgian Congo, Jordan, and Egypt. But the corporate headquarters in Beerse, Belgium, needed support for the company’s growing global operations. Paul explained, “A drug that doesn’t make it in America will never become an international blockbuster” (3). In 1961, Janssen joined forces with US-based Johnson & Johnson in a mutually beneficial merger. For J&J, the consumer products company best known for Band-Aids and baby shampoo now included medical research and pharmaceutical products. For Paul, the merger was a sort of insurance policy (2). Janssen Pharmaceutica expanded its global reach and acquired financial security but retained its company identity.
Worms, Bugs, and Mold In 1960, the Belgian Congo gained its independence, and many Belgian expatriates were forced to return to Belgium by the leaders of the new country, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Many of the expatriates were scientists: pharmacologists, neurologists, veterinarians, and other specialists with extensive knowledge about parasites, fungi, and protozoa (2). Dr. Paul recruited more than two dozen of them, the first in a long line of distinguished scientists who came out of Africa and developed Janssen Pharmaceutica’s expertise in tropical medicine (2, 3). Dr. Paul’s new parasitology team concentrated on finding broad-spectrum anthelmintics because various species of worms affect about half of the world’s population (2). Newly synthesized compounds were assessed in a simple animal model using chickens, which by nature are often infected with worms. After four years of optimizing the structureactivity of various compounds and their metabolites,
the Janssen chemists produced levamisole (R12564), which was considered a major breakthrough in parasitology (2, 6). Similarly, the expatriate microbiologists developed a huge library of fungi and fungal spores to screen compounds for anti-mycotic activity, leading to the discovery of miconazole (R14889) in 1967 (2, 6). Miconazole was effective against a broad spectrum of fungi, molds, and some bacterial strains, including Candida albicans, which is responsible for vaginal yeast infections.
Ketoconazole (R41400) was the first orally active antifungal drug, a major breakthrough Dr. Paul was skilled at recognizing core chemical structures that were biologically active and exploiting them to create a wide variety of therapeutic products. Lomotil, Imodium, and fentanyl were all generated from the phenylpiperidine backbone of meperidine. Similarly, levamisole and miconazole both contain an imidazole ring, which became another workhorse of Janssen chemistry. Further modifications of the imidazole series produced mebendazole (R17635) in 1968, another anthelmintic with broad-spectrum activity against roundworm, hookworm, and whipworm (2, 6). The Janssen research initiatives to eradicate fungal, parasitic, and bacterial infections in patients evolved to include products that could also be used in veterinary medicine and for plant protection. In 1969, the Janssen chemists produced imazalil (R23979), another imidazole analog. It proved to be effective against a number of molds and fungi and was developed as an agrochemical product to prevent fungal decay in grain crops, fruits, and vegetables and to treat mildew on roses (2). The success of these efforts led to construction of a greenhouse on Janssen’s Beerse campus in 1972 to do in vivo research on fruit trees, wheat, and sugar beets and to facilitate development of antifungal products to protect them. The following year – the 20th anniversary of Dr. Paul’s laboratory – Plant Protection was established as a separate division within the Janssen research organization.
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Dr. Paul’s staff had grown to 1,246 people, of whom 389 were researchers. They had synthesized 27,975 compounds, held 50 patents, had launched 37 commercial drugs, and were in the midst of developing 17 more drugs (2). In 1976, the Janssen chemists synthesized another analog of miconazole with broad activity against fungi and yeasts. Ketoconazole (R41400) was the first orally active antifungal drug, a major breakthrough (2, 6). It was widely prescribed to AIDS and cancer chemotherapy patients who suffered from systemic fungal infections. In 1979, the Plant Protection division developed propiconazole (R49362), an analog of imazalil, as an agricultural product. Propiconazole is absorbed by plants and protects them from the inside out – a more efficient antifungal delivery than topical spraying. The product is widely used to protect turf grasses, fruit and nut trees, and grain crops (2).
The Orient Express
Photo: In the public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Paul made his first trip to China in 1976 as a member of a mission sponsored by the Belgian Chemistry Federation (2). His wife, Dora, accompanied him and was keen to explore local Chinese history and art, especially some remarkable artifacts that had been discovered just two years earlier in Xi’an. A couple of farmers had been digging a well in a persimmon orchard, but instead of water, they pulled up some clay fragments that turned out to be one of the 20th century’s most spectacular archeological discoveries. When pieced together, the
Janssen Pharmaceutica unit in Xi’an, China.
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
fragments became the statue of a warrior from the time of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The fledgling archeological site was not open to tourists, but through Paul’s connections, he and Dora were able to arrange a private visit. The archivists were restoring the precious artifacts in a small lean-to building made from corrugated sheet metal. So far, they had assembled only two statues. Dr. Paul subsequently made a number of trips to China, spearheading arrangements to market Janssen products in China. The Hanjiang Pharmaceutical Company in Hanzhong (a city in China’s inland Shaanxi province) handled local distribution. The relationship matured, and in 1985 Janssen Pharmaceutica finally reached an agreement with the Chinese government to build a new manufacturing facility in Shaanxi province. Rather than expanding Janssen’s established operations in Hanzhong, the Belgian company deferred to Chinese authorities, who preferred Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi, as the site for the new plant. Xi’an-Janssen Pharmaceuticals opened in 1991 and was a joint venture with Shaanxi Medical Industry Company, the China Medical Industry Company, the China Pharmaceutical Foreign Technical Cooperation Company, and the Hanjiang Pharmaceutical Company (2). The People’s Republic had already consummated three other joint ventures with western pharmaceutical companies (Japan’s Otsuka, the American Bristol-Myers Squibb, and a Swedish conglomerate), but the Xi’an-Janssen factory was the largest such facility (2). The eight buildings in the complex totaled 325,000 square feet of manufacturing space and produced medicines for shipment throughout China. Chinese authorities proudly showcased the Xi’an pharmaceutical plant as the example of successful foreign investment in the inland Chinese provinces. Much of that success was due to the warm personal relationship that Dr. Paul fostered with his Chinese friends, and the feeling was mutual. In 1993, he became the first foreigner to receive a pharmaceutical honorary doctorate in China (2, 3).
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The Chinese Puzzle As the Xi’an-Janssen factory grew in stature, an army of ancient warriors was emerging from the Chinese soil only 15 miles away. People knew that emperors and their families had been buried in the Yellow River valley near Xi’an, a city of great historical significance. But the magnitude of what they were uncovering at the excavation site was beyond belief. In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang united seven independent Warring States to create China’s first empire and established Xi’an as the new capital (1). Although the 39-year-old emperor ruled this empire for only ten years, the Qin dynasty was a major turning point in China’s history. Qin Shi Huang abolished the feudal system and established a central government with state appointments based on merit. He standardized weights and measures as well as Small Seal Script (the form of Chinese handwriting). He also dug canals – some of which are still in use – and standardized the axle length of carts and wagons to facilitate transportation and communication (1).
His massive construction projects each required hundreds of thousands of laborers. One project involved linking numerous existing small defensive walls along the empire’s northern border to discourage invaders, a precursor to what became the Great Wall. Another major project was construction of his own tomb. To safeguard his voyage into the afterlife, Qin Shi Huang surrounded his mausoleum with 8,000 terracotta warriors: life-sized reproductions of soldiers, some standing with chrome-plated bronze swords and spears, some kneeling with drawn bows and arrows, and still others driving chariots behind horses made out of clay (1). What Paul Janssen saw when he stood at the edge of the excavation pits in the late 1990s was much different from his first visit. The small corrugated steel shed had been replaced by a museum of multiple
Photo: In the public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Exposure to the 20th century atmosphere and the breath of enthralled tourists were decaying the fragile terracotta statues at an alarming rate.
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.
buildings covering a site the size of 45 football fields and permitting visitors to watch the archeologists at work. In trenches below the visitors’ gallery in Pit 1, long columns of soldiers stood in regimental order four abreast – each painstakingly pieced together from millions of terracotta fragments (1). But they looked sick. The statues’ colors were fading, and the mechanical properties of the terracotta had weakened. Exposure to the 20th century atmosphere and the breath of enthralled tourists were decaying the fragile terracotta statues at
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an alarming rate. The temperature in the museum was typically above 70°F and the humidity ranged from 70 to 90 percent. Large areas of the gallery walls and dirt floor were covered with mold. Curators of ceramics at other museums had sometimes seen damage to their artifacts from certain fungi that produce acids, but little was known about the interaction between fungi and terracotta (2). Fortunately, Dr. Paul was now on the case. In 1999, he returned to Beerse with a few samples of the infected terracotta (7). Fungus experts in the bioresearch laboratory of Janssen’s Plant and Materials Protection division had already read about the problem in news reports and eagerly applied their extensive knowledge to these somewhat unusual patients. They isolated 19 different mycotic species, many of which were known to damage bricks and
plasterwork, and some produced acids (8). Because these microbes also damage living organisms, they threatened not only the terracotta statues but also the museum personnel and the tens of thousands of visitors to the museum (2). Using old flowerpots as their test subjects, the Janssen experts drew on their arsenal of antifungal products and assessed the feasibility of repelling the warriors’ infections (2, 7). The flowerpots (some pretreated with antifungal agents) were contaminated with a mixture of the Chinese fungal spores and subjected to environmental conditions that mimicked those at the Xi’an museum (25°C and high humidity). After 12 weeks, the untreated control pots were covered with fungi, but the pots pretreated with Janssen’s anti-mycotic agents remained fungusfree (2). Imazalil and propiconazole were particularly effective in counteracting the fungi (8). Next, the researchers conducted field tests at the Xi’an site to determine whether the ancient terracotta could be protected like the Belgian flowerpots. To minimize damage to the delicate warriors, the scientists prepared water-based solutions of the fungicides and applied them using a simple handspray. They established the half-life of the antifungal effect and watched for side effects, including chemical-induced alterations in the Chinese statues’ color and composition. This information led to an initial treatment plan for the warriors. Measures were also taken to control spores in the soil and air of the museum (2, 7).
Photo: Shutterstock
James Black, himself a Nobel Laureate, called Paul Janssen “the most prolific drug inventor of all time… not a single researcher of medicines has done as much as he has”
A rank of soldiers from the excavated terracotta army.
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Janssen Pharmaceutica provided its specially formulated fungicides to the museum free of charge for a two-year trial period. In addition, because of the importance of these relics, Janssen and the museum entered into a formal agreement in 2000, and Dr. Paul personally presided at the signing ceremony (2, 9). Under this “Agreement of Protection
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Photo: Shutterstock
for the Site of Terracotta Army and Relevant Relics,” Janssen Pharmaceutica not only provided its customformulated products but also trained several of the museum’s scientists in antimicrobial techniques and established a state-of-the-art microbiology laboratory
at the museum – the Dr. Paul Janssen Laboratory for Advanced Material Protection (8). The original 3-year cooperative agreement has been renewed twice (currently running until 2017). Wu Yongqi, the museum’s curator, describes the relationship with Janssen as “jin shang tian hua,” a Chinese idiom that suggests something perfect benefitting from further perfection (10). With their increased knowledge of terracotta microbiology, the Chinese technicians ultimately identified 60 different fungi growing on the statues (7, 10). Together with the Janssen specialists, they have found optimal methods for controlling fungal growth – treatment that is closely overseen by the archeologists and has kept the army fit for service (2, 10). The Chinese experts now conduct scientific research with autonomy, and the Museum of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses has become a center of excellence for research on bio-deterioration of cultural artifacts for the entire People’s Republic of China (8, 9).
Decaying terracotta warriors infested with mold.
Major Products Developed under Paul Janssen’s Leadership R-number
Name (Brand)
Date of Synthesis
Indication
R5
ambucetamide
1953
antispasmodic
R79
isopropamide (Darbid)
June 25, 1954
anticholinergic
R1132
diphenoxylate (Lomotil)
November 21, 1956
antidiarrheal
R1625
haloperidol (Haldol)
February 15, 1958
neuroleptic
R4263
fentanyl
December 8, 1960
analgesic
R4749
droperidol (Inapsine)
June 19, 1961
neuroleptic
R5147
spiperone (Spiropitan)
December 20, 1961
neuroleptic
R6238
pimozide (Orap)
January 23, 1963
neuroleptic
R12564
levamisole (Ergamisol)
February 8, 1966
anthelmintic
R14889
miconazole (Desenex, Lotrimin)
November 23, 1967
antimycotic
R17635
mebendazole (Vermox)
November 15, 1968
anthelmintic
R18553
loperamide (Imodium)
April 1, 1969
antidiarrheal
R23979
imazalil (Fungaflor)
March 28, 1969
antimycotic
R30730
sufentanil (Sufenta)
February 8, 1974
analgesic
R49362 (R35432)
propiconazole (Orbit, Tilt)
March 20, 1975
antimycotic
R41400
ketoconazole (Nizoral)
March 31, 1976
antimycotic
R64766
risperidone (Risperdal)
November 14, 1984
neuroleptic
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Biosketch:
Rebecca J. Anderson holds a bachelor’s in chemistry from Coe College and earned her doctorate in pharmacology from Georgetown University. She has 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development and now works as a technical writer. Her most recent book is Nevirapine and the Quest to End Pediatric AIDS. Email rebeccanderson @msn.com.
Peerlessly Prolific Dr. Paul relinquished his responsibilities as Janssen Pharmaceutica’s president and director of research in 1991. Under his leadership, the Janssen division of J&J had grown to more than 11,000 employees and generated 100,000 R-numbered compounds, of which 80 had been developed as pharmaceutical products for human, animal, and plant diseases (2). Those drugs included compounds for pain and anesthesiology, cardiovascular disease, allergies, all sorts of mental illnesses, and gastrointestinal disorders, as well as infestations by fungi and worms. Dr. Paul remained an active researcher for another decade, focusing on the emerging field of
computer-assisted drug design and serving as director of Janssen’s Center for Molecular Design. At the time of his death in 2003, the annual revenues of the Janssen division of J&J reached more than $9 billion, approximately 25% of Johnson & Johnson’s total sales (3). Paul Janssen had received more than 35 scientific awards and 22 honorary doctorates (ranging from medicine to natural science, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, and philosophy) and was nominated several times for a Nobel Prize. James Black, himself a Nobel Laureate, called Paul Janssen “the most prolific drug inventor of all time…not a single researcher of medicines has done as much as he has” (2, 6). Surely, the Chinese terracotta warriors would agree.
References 1. Lin Z (2005) The Qin Dynasty Terra-Cotta Army of Dreams (An H ed) Xi’an Press, Xi’an, China. 2. Magiels G (2004) Paul Janssen: Pioneer in Pharma & in China, Dundee University Press, Dundee, UK. 3. Stanley TH, Egan TD, and Van Aken H (2008) A tribute to Dr. Paul A. J. Janssen: Entrepreneur extraordinaire, innovative scientist, and significant contributor to anesthesiology. Anesthesia & Analgesia 106(2):451-462. 4. Ban TA (2004) Obituary: Paul Adriaan Jan Janssen, 1926-2003. Neuropsychopharmacology 29:1579-1580.
In the next issue of The Pharmacologist… Dr. Anderson will be exploring a story about how the blue blood of the lowly horseshoe crab guarantees the purity of all injectable drugs. Don’t miss the exciting June 2015 issue.
5. Janssen PAJ and Tollenaere JP (1983) The suppression of psychotic behavior: The discovery of the butyrophenone-type neuroleptics, in Discoveries in Pharmacology: Psycho- and neuropharmacology (Parnham MJ and Bruinvels J eds) pp 181-196, Elsevier, New York. 6. Black J (2005) A personal perspective on Dr. Paul Janssen. J Med Chem 48:1687-1688. 7. Manila Standard Today (June 24, 2002) China’s 2,250-year-old terracotta army attacked by fungus: Janssen Pharmaceutica fights fungal infection, Sect. A:3; available from: http://news. google.com/newspapers?nid=1370&dat=20020624&id=Tg8iAAAAIBAJ&sjid= EgsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6304,2549611. 8. Bosselaers J and Valcke A (2009) From wood protection to preservation of historic monuments: the commitment of Janssen PMP to cultural heritage conservation, presented at Intl. Conf. on Wooden Cultural Heritage: Evaluation of deterioration and management of change, Hamburg, Germany; available from: www.woodculther.com/wp-content/ uploads/2009/09/Bosselaers.pdf. 9. Johnson & Johnson (2013) Cultural Protection; available from: www.jnj.com.cn/en/our-caring/ our-story/the_first_emperor. 10. Leow J, Wang SS, and Crow K (August 18, 2008) J&J wins favored status by curing statue fungus woes. Wall Street Journal; available from: www.wsj.com/articles/ SB121901745077548227.
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Science Policy
Momentum for NIH Funding? The president’s $4 trillion budget request in February kicked off what promises to be another difficult political road ahead for supporters of biomedical research. To be sure, the president’s FY 2016 budget is positive for the National Institutes of Health.
With just six months to go before the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, realizing these proposed gains for NIH will be difficult. Overall, there is $146 billion, almost 6% more for research and development for FY 2016. NIH would receive a 3.3% or $1 billion increase, for a $31.3 billion FY 2016 budget. NIH stated that this increase would mean a “significant portion of the $1 billion increase will be
devoted to raising the number of new and competing research project grants (RPG).” The agency estimates the president’s budget would support 10,303 competing RPGs (1,227 more than projected for FY 2015). RPGs would total 35, 447 (1,241 more than projected for FY 2015). The average costs for new and competing RPGs would remain steady at $461,000. There is also new money to support an additional 204 full time training positions, a 2% increase for trainee stipends, $95 million more for intramural research, a $29 million increase for the Director’s office – $20 million of which is dedicated to the Common Fund, and $129 million for buildings and facilities. Additionally, $215 million is for NIH to implement a new Precision Medicine Initiative, and $70 million is directed to the National Cancer Institute to expand cancer genomics research. Finally, more than $650 million is for research into antimicrobial resistance.
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All of this is really encouraging news but for the fact President Obama’s budget blows through the spending caps set in law back in 2011. In fact, the budget exceeds those spending caps by more than 7%, totaling about $74 billion more than the spending limit set in 2011. This amount lifts defense spending by $38 billion ($561 billion total in FY 2016) and $37 billion ($530 billion total in FY 2016) for non-defense discretionary spending that includes the NIH. With just six months to go before the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, realizing these proposed gains for NIH will be difficult. Immediately following release of the President’s budget on February 2, it was clear there was great distance between the White House and congressional Republicans. Reconciling the president’s plan to lift the spending caps with many Republican’s desire to see them remain in place will be the prime time agenda from now until September 30.
End of Sequestration? ASPET members may recall – or want to forget – that Congress established sequestration in the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA). The BCA mandated that spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion were scheduled to begin in 2013 and continue through 2021. Sequestration was the instrument to be used if Congress failed to come to an agreement to find $1.2 trillion in savings, through any combination of new revenue and/or spending cuts. Congress failed, and so the automatic cuts went into effect. Sequestration was temporarily suspended with a two year budget agreement that has now expired. The BCA spending caps were only limited to
programs funded through the annual appropriations process. The NIH, NSF, National Park Service, Department of Defense, and all other federal agencies and programs would bear the brunt of these cuts. Mandatory or entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were exempt from the BCA. Now, with ongoing and emerging threats overseas, many lawmakers are looking to relieve defense spending from any further budget cuts. However, some lawmakers do not want to see the overall spending caps increased as proposed by the president, which means that money to pay for defense would have to come from non-defense discretionary side. If that happens, it would be difficult for any program on the non-defense discretionary side of the ledger to escape additional cuts, including the NIH. For his part, the president has said that he would veto any spending bill that does not remove the automatic spending cuts that are part of the BCA. The politics of this will be played out in the coming months. There are a number of Republicans who are eager to increase defense spending but also realize that discretionary programs can’t be cut anymore and that the nation needs to make smart investments, including increasing support for biomedical research, which gives some room for optimism that a reasonable deal can be made before October 1. Real negotiations have begun. The story to follow this spring and summer is whether any compromise can be hatched satisfying Republicans’ desire to increase military spending with some of the president’s proposed increases.
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “Medical Innovation Act” Reflecting congressional concerns over diminished federal investment at the NIH, a number of legislators have introduced bills to increase funding for biomedical research. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has introduced the “Medical Innovation Act” that would attempt
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
to increase funding for the NIH and FDA. The bill requires drug companies that have violated the law and entered into settlements with the U.S. Justice Department to pay a percentage of their yearly profits for five years to supplement funding for the NIH and FDA. To ensure that the legislation results in a net
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increase in funding for medical research, money from the payments will be made available only in years that annual appropriations to NIH and FDA keep pace with inflation. A summary of the bill can be viewed here: www.aspet.org/Medical_Innovation_Act.
The bill requires drug companies that have violated the law and entered into settlements with the U.S. Justice Department to pay a percentage of their yearly profits for five years to supplement funding for the NIH and FDA. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) re-introduced the American Cures Act, which intends to increase funding for NIH, CDC, DoD medical programs, and VA prosthetic research at a rate of GDP-indexed inflation plus 5 percent. This would allow for steady, longterm investments and would allow the agencies to plan and manage strategic growth while maximizing efficiencies.
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) reintroduced the Accelerating Biomedical Research Act. DeLauro’s bill is similar to the one that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced last year allowing funding for the NIH to be increased outside of the spending caps. Reportedly, the legislation would increase funding by 10 percent in the first 2 years and 6 percent each year through 2021 as long as Congress appropriates at least $29.4 billion in regular appropriations. While the prospect for passage of any of these bills is unlikely, ASPET is supportive of Senators Warren and Durbin and Rep. DeLauro’s innovative efforts to supplement funding for biomedical research. However, ASPET members should continue to communicate to members of congress that the NIH will not be able to address scientific opportunities unless measures are taken to remove sequestration and work toward a permanent solution to raise the spending caps to allow more flexibility to meet the nation’s funding priorities and to increase funding for NIH and other non-defense discretionary programs and agencies.
FASEB Report on Sustaining the Biomedical Research Enterprise After seeking considerable input from the biomedical research community, FASEB released an in-depth analysis of the real threats to continued progress in biological and medical science. “Sustaining Discovery in Biological and Medical Science: A Framework for Discussion,” offers several remedies to many of the challenges facing our community. Noting that change is taking place throughout the research enterprise, the FASEB report documents how diminished federal funding and rising regulatory costs have constrained research budgets, creating an increasingly unstable research enterprise and delaying scientific discovery. The FASEB report takes an in-depth look at three broad categories of recommendations to consider:
• Increased advocacy for predictable, sustainable growth in research budgets while striving to make optimal use of existing resources • Re-examination of the way research is funded, making certain that the research community provides incentives to encourage the best science and reduce the amount of time spent seeking funding, and • Improved preparation and utilization of the workforce. FASEB is no longer soliciting comments to its report which can viewed here: bit.ly/1u6CXpz
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ASPET Advocacy Outreach Program Complements Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Training Are you interested in a real “inside baseball” look at how Washington works? Ever wondered how the NIH can enjoy bipartisan support while its budget has stagnated and lost 23% of its purchasing power over the last decade? ASPET’s Advocacy Outreach Program is dedicated to educate and train graduate students, post-docs, and faculty in pharmacology departments on the importance of grassroots advocacy in support of the National Institutes of Health. The ultimate goal of ASPET’s advocacy outreach program is to 1) develop a cadre of interested individuals who will more effectively advocate on critical issues of science funding and science policy and 2) provide individuals the skills needed to become informed and proactive participants in these issues at whatever institution they may find themselves in the near future. As a scientist, you are the most effective advocate for the biomedical science research enterprise – and the most credible too. These skills are important for young investigators as they begin their careers and for those individuals considering pursuing career options in science policy. Today’s economic and political environment make it imperative that biomedical scientists, particularly
graduate students and young investigators, become more informed and involved in policy. ASPET’s Advocacy Outreach Program is part of a continued effort that must be made to help make the case to Congress, the media, and the public about the health and economic benefits of a robust biomedical research enterprise and the need for steady and sustained increases for NIH. The ASPET Advocacy Outreach Program has met with many postdoctoral associations and departments. To date, ASPET has visited UT Southwestern, Emory University, Wayne State for Michigan’s Annual Research Colloquium, University of Louisville, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Drexel University College of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University at Buffalo, University of South Florida, Medical University of South Carolina, UTHSC-San Antonio, Penn State University, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. If there is an opportunity for ASPET to make a presentation at your institution or for information on ASPET’s Advocacy Outreach Program, contact us at publicaffairs@aspet.org. There is no cost to your institution as ASPET assumes all travel expenses for this important effort.
ASPET Supports Coalition Effort to Replace Sequestration with Balanced Approach to Deficit Reduction ASPET joined almost 3,000 organizations in a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to support investments in non-defense discretionary (NND) programs and urge members of Congress to replace sequestration with a balanced approach to deficit reduction. ASPET joined NDD United, a
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coalition group dedicated to preserving non-defense discretionary programs from continued budget cuts to vital agencies and programs. A copy of the letter can be found here: www. publichealthfunding.org/uploads/NDDUnited. SignOn.Feb2015.FINALwithSigs.pdf
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Congress Looks at Challenges to Medical Innovation 21st Century Cures Initiative Late in January, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unveiled draft legislation of the “21st Century Cures Initiative” that intends to remedy roadblocks to medical innovation. While acknowledging innovation is happening at “lightning speed,” the committee notes that although “health care research is moving quickly… the federal drug and device approval apparatus is in many ways the relic of another era. We have dedicated scientists and bold leaders at agencies like the NIH and the FDA, but when our laws don’t keep pace with innovation, we all lose.” The committee’s intent is to take a comprehensive look at medical innovation from discoveries in basic science to the drug development process and beyond to treatment and delivery.
The bill would require NIH to implement the National Pediatric Research Network Act as well as remove roadblocks for funding NCATS clinical trials. The House Energy and Commerce Committee draft bill, while not an appropriations bill, does contain a couple of funding provisions. The bill would require NIH to implement the National Pediatric Research Network Act as well as remove roadblocks for funding NCATS clinical trials. The bill includes language to require NIH grantees to share their data and encourage greater collaboration among NIH, FDA, industry, and the European Union to help establish a pediatric clinical trial network. Additionally, the legislation also has a proposal
to move NIH funds normally drawn from annual “evaluation taps” and move those funds to grants for first time grantees. The bill also addresses FDA personnel issues and the drug approval process at the agency.
Senate HELP Shortly after the committee unveiled its draft 21st Century Cures legislation, a Senate Committee released a companion report to the House’s 21st Century Cures bill. Innovation for a Healthier America: Identifying Opportunities for Meaningful Reform to Our Nation’s Medical Products Discovery and Development takes a look at the challenges of ”getting safe treatments, devices, and cures to patients more quickly and effectively.” Specifically, the report looks at what is and is not working at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. The report begins a major initiative by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee to examine challenges with drug and medical device development and identify ways to better align policy to support medical innovation. As stated in the executive summary, “This report aims to examine the current process of drug and device development and identify the inefficiencies that stand in the way of a modern development and review process. We take a close and honest look at what is, and is not, working well at the NIH and FDA. We want to know what successes we can replicate, and what failures must be learned from and fixed.” The report looks at the role of basic research in new medical products, how to improve clinical trials, regulatory science, and the rising global competition to U.S. medical product development.
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2016 Washington Fellows Program Submit your application by September 2, 2015 S Program Mission
Who Should Apply?
The mission of the ASPET Washington Fellows Program is to enable developing and early career scientists interested in science policy to learn about and become more engaged in public policy issues. Fellows will develop an understanding of how public policy decisions made in Washington help shape and impact science policy, such as funding for the National Institutes of Health and other science agencies. Fellows will also learn how to advocate effectively on Capitol Hill and in their home districts. This program will help Fellows develop the skills and insights to become future leaders in science.
The ASPET Washington Fellows Program is open to any graduate student, postdoctoral trainee, or researcher no more than four years past the completion of his/her postdoctoral training. Applicants must be members of ASPET in good standing and have a strong interest in science and its intersection with public policy. Fellows will be selected by the ASPET Science Policy Committee.
What Will ASPET Fellows Do?
All applications must contain the following information and be submitted by September 2, 2015, as a single combined PDF:
Advocate on Capitol Hill: ASPET Fellows will come to Washington, DC, to meet with their congressional delegation to advocate for biomedical research and increased funding for the NIH. Fellows will be well trained by ASPET and prepared with the appropriate message to deliver to Congress. ASPET will cover transportation costs, hotel, and other reasonable expenses that follow ASPET’s reimbursement policy. Become Advocates in their Home Districts: ASPET Fellows will meet with Members of Congress in their home district, act as a conduit to inform colleagues within their departments/institutions about federal legislative matters, write op-ed pieces to local papers, etc. All these activities will be undertaken with the support and advice of ASPET. Attend the ASPET Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology 2016: ASPET Fellows will attend the 2016 ASPET Annual Meeting in San Diego and any related policy program sessions assigned. Fellows will receive an ASPET travel award to attend the meeting.
Application Information ASPET anticipates up to 10 Washington Fellows Program participants in 2016. Fellows serve one-year terms.
A letter (no more than two pages) from the applicant stating their interest in public policy and why they are interested in the ASPET Washington Fellows Program A Curriculum Vitae A letter of support from the candidate’s mentor and/or department chair Incomplete applications and/ or applications received after September 2, 2015, will not be considered.
For more info: www.aspet.org/2016_ASPET_Washington_Fellows_Program (301) 634-7060 publicaffairs@aspet.org The Pharmacologist • March 2015
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Education News Getting the Most Out of Academic Conferences By Uyen Chu and Members of the Mentoring and Career Development Committee Whether you have attended conferences in the past or Experimental Biology (EB) 2015 is your first foray into scientific meetings, most people find large scientific conferences daunting. As a budding scientist, conferences are one of the few opportunities you have to meet other scientists in your field, present your research, and build new research collaborations. It is also a chance to interact with representatives from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies who could become your future employer. ASPET’s Mentoring and Career Development committee has developed the following guide to help you be proactive at conferences, expand your network, and build professional relationships to develop your career as a scientist.
Preparing for the Conference Lodging: Should I stay at a hotel that is farther away but has a great price or one near the convention center but costs a little bit more? There are many advantages of staying at a hotel close to the convention center. First, a nearby hotel allows you to take short breaks when you have a full day. Second, many of the social/networking events occur in the evenings. These events are a great place for meeting new people but may end late. If you choose a hotel more distant from the convention center, be sure your hotel has safe transportation options. If you are tight on traveling funds but still want to stay at a hotel nearby, consider getting a roommate. EB has a roommate matching website that you can use – it’s also a great way to meet new friends. A complimentary shuttle service will be provided at EB 2015 between the Boston Convention
and Exhibition Center and the contracted EB hotel community. For more information, visit www.aspet. org/Annual_Meeting_EB_2015/Experimental_ Biology_2015_Shuttle_Service/. Attire: What should I wear and pack for the conference? At EB you’ll find a spectrum of business casual to informal attire. Wear comfortable but professional clothes (and shoes) because you will be interacting with people 10–12 hours on average each day for the duration of the conference. Business Cards: Should I bring business cards? Business cards are useful to give your contact information to people you meet. If you don’t have professionally prepared business cards, you could prepare your own in advance of the meeting. It is a good idea to carry a small notebook and pen with you at all times to jot down information about people you meet. Science Pitch: Is a science pitch (or elevator speech) necessary? That depends on how comfortable you feel giving a spiel of your work to a complete stranger in less than five minutes. Remember that the purpose of a science pitch is to get your audience interested in your science so that they want to learn more about your research. The California Stem Cell Agency held a Science Pitch Competition a few years ago and archived the contestants’ entries on a website. Follow the link at the end of this article for examples of science pitches to help you prepare yours.
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Itinerary: How should I spend my time at EB? The key purposes for attending conferences are to expand your knowledge of current science, expand your professional network, and build collaborative relationships. Scientific conferences are where leaders from many fields gather together to present cuttingedge research, discuss the current trends and future directions of science in each field, and determine strategies to promote research funding. It can be overwhelming, and it is easy to lose focus of your goal. Thus, it is useful to have a checklist of people you want to talk to and events you want to attend before you get to the meeting. Below is a general overview of key features and events that take place at EB. 1. Scientific lectures/talks (ranging from 15 minutes to 1 hour) organized into nanosymposia, minisymposia, and symposia. These symposia are generally focused around a specific scientific topic. 2. Poster presentations sectioned first into their sponsoring societies and grouped into scientific topics. 3. Exhibitions hosted by pharmaceutical and biotech companies, publishers, funding agencies, scientific societies, and science equipment vendors. 4. Career development events organized by participating societies on a wide range of career topics. 5. Recurring career development workshops hosted by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), including grant writing, negotiating for your start-up package, writing an effective resume, etc. These events and job postings are located at the “Career Center” in the exhibition hall. 6. Social/networking events organized by participating societies inside the Conference Center and at nearby hotels in the evening. Considering these events, an agenda of your meeting schedule might look similar to the following:
Science-Related Events • Present your oral/poster presentation and connect with people who show interest in your research. • Attend talks by scientists in your research area and connect with them at the meeting.
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•A ttend award-winning talks to expand your scientific knowledge. ttend your division’s annual meeting and •A networking events. • L earn about a science technique that you are interested in for your research by connecting with people (either at a different institution or at a company) who are experts in that technique. onnect with members of the ASPET Council. •C
Career-Related Events • Attend ASPET’s Graduate Student-Postdoctoral Colloquium and connect with other graduate students/postdocs. • Attend ASPET and FASEB career symposia and workshops (depending on your interests and needs). • Check the job bulletin board every day (if you are in the job market). • Connect with people outside of academia in career paths that interest you.
Attending the Conference Present Your Research As graduate students and postdocs, giving a talk or presenting a poster may be one of the few opportunities you have to showcase your work to people outside of your department or institution, and these events may be the only impression they have of you and your work (i.e., your reputation). Practice giving your presentation with lab members in advance. However, keep in mind that your audience at national conferences may not be familiar with your area of research so be deliberate in conveying the importance of your research. Know your presentation day and time and invite potential postdoc advisors and people you meet to attend your talk or visit your poster. If you brought business cards, write this information on the back before you hand them out.
Attend Oral and Poster Presentations: Attend presentations by scientists in your field: It is important for the growth of your career to recognize key figures in your field and learn about their work. Be proactive in introducing yourself to these individuals at the conference. If you are interested in working with them in the future (e.g., for postdoc training), consider scheduling a meeting with them in advance and invite them to your talk/poster.
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Attend award-winning presentations: Awardwinning presentations are good ways to expand your scientific knowledge in areas outside of your fields. These talks generally are given by researchers who are pioneers in their fields and often are quite inspirational. Consider making an impression by asking insightful questions at the end. Attend career talks sponsored by ASPET: ASPET (and other participating societies) organizes many career development talks and workshops each year. This is a good way to learn about nonacademic careers and to connect with scientists who followed interesting career paths. It is also a venue where you will meet peers from similar graduate programs at universities around the world. These people may be helpful in future job searches. Attend your sponsoring society’s business meeting(s) and consider getting involved by volunteering for committees: Scientific societies are similar to many organizations; there is a governing body and many committees made up of scientists who volunteer their time to organize events for the conference. There are committees that tackle contemporary issues affecting the scientific community, such as how to train future scientists, how to promote diversity, best practices in undergraduate and graduate science education, etc. It is useful for your career to understand the workings of such societies and to get involved to make the changes you want to see. Volunteering to serve on a committee is one way to network with scientists who are as passionate as you about similar issues and a great strategy to build relationships with colleagues outside of your department or institution. Visit exhibition booths from companies, publishers, government laboratories, and scientific societies: For many graduate students and postdocs who do not live in cities that are home to pharmaceutical and/or biotechnology companies, it can be difficult to network with scientists in industry. Exhibits from companies are good opportunities to meet and learn from scientists and nonscientists working in companies ranging from small start-ups to large pharmaceutical companies. Connect with these individuals to find out about the culture of their organization and the benefits and disadvantages of working there. Don’t be shy about asking them to connect you with colleagues within their companies who have a job that you are interested in learning
more about. Perhaps you are interested in career paths related to publishing, government, and/or the military – also consider visiting these booths to learn more about these career paths. A few words on networking etiquette: ood and drinks: As mentioned earlier, organized •F networking events happen in the evenings, normally with an abundance of free food and drinks. A caution on eating and drinking at these events: know your limits! Remember that you are likely to see these people in the future if you stay in the field, and you want to leave the conference with a good impression. •W hat should I talk about? Start with your research, then talk about conference activities, interesting talks you attended, your career goals, and interests outside of science – scientists are people with interesting hobbies outside of work, too. Finally, you don’t always have to talk. Listening is a key skill for successful networking.
Following Up After the Conference Consider revisiting your checklist of individuals you set out to connect with at the meeting and send follow-up emails after you return home. Also follow up with people you met at networking events and your poster/oral presentation. If you get the chance to attend the next EB meeting, send an email prior to the meeting requesting a meeting. Building a professional relationship takes time and effort, especially with colleagues you see only once a year. These guidelines are a first step to getting the most out of a meeting such as EB. If you find these techniques to be valuable, share them with your colleagues and use them to build professional relationships even at your own institution. The best way to be good at something is practice!
Additional Resources Ferrazzi K and Raz T (2005) Never Eat Alone, Crown Business, New York. California’s Stem Cell Agency Science Pitch Competition. We recommend the following science pitches: William Kim, Lina Nih, Mirina Bershteyn, Andrew Goldstein, John Zaia, Deepak Srivastava, and Carrie Micella, Stanley Nelson. www.cirm.ca.gov/ our-progress/stem-cell-videos?&&field_voc_video_ event_tid%5B0%5D=746.
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Pharmacology Educators: Don’t Miss These Events at the 2015 ASPET Annual Meeting Emphasizing ASPET’s continued commitment to improving pharmacology education, the following events will combine practical advice with interactive demonstrations and discussions. Whether you are new to teaching or are an experienced educator looking to refine your skills, mark your calendar for the following pharmacology education events at the 2015 ASPET Annual Meeting.
2015 Teaching Institute: Training Students for Teaching Careers Saturday, March 28, 12:00 pm–2:30 pm Boston Convention Center
Summary The number of tenured academic positions has declined in recent years as basic science departments have been downsized and merged; simultaneously, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have announced drastic cut-backs in their workforces. As a result, concern has been voiced about over-production of PhDs. However, it may not be that we must stop “producing” PhDs but rather, perhaps, we must reform our current PhD training programs to better align our trainees with the job opportunities that are available – even if that means training students differently than we were trained – to prepare them for success in “researchrelated” careers. The “-omic” revolution of the last two decades has led to a decline in the number of scientists trained with systems pharmacology and integrative physiology skill sets in favor of molecular biologists. This shift has resulted in a shortage of individuals equipped to teach in pharmacy, medical, and other health profession schools who can train the next generation of healthcare providers, and this shortage of teaching faculty for health profession programs is only projected to increase. Therefore, we currently have an opportunity to train students and postdocs in ways to specifically fill a known demand in the workforce. There are, however, two underlying
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issues that must be addressed to successfully bridge this gap: first, the lack of training opportunities in “systems” pharmacology must be addressed, and second, our trainees must be provided with opportunities to engage in meaningful teaching experiences before they land their first faculty positions. To address the first issue, programs funded by both the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the NIH have been designed to expose graduate students, post-docs, and intramural fellows to clinical pharmacology in an effort to enhance the bench-tobedside translational research endeavors and be more “marketable” as health professions educators. The second issue is currently being addressed by both NIH IRACDA programs, as well as new programs springing up at individual institutions that provide PhD students and postdoctoral trainees with mentored-teaching experiences so trainees can begin developing their own individual teaching philosophies and design appropriate assessment measures. Overall, linking clinical /systems-based pharmacology training programs with career development programs in teaching may be a way to fill the shortage of teaching faculty that currently exists within health professions programs. This symposium will explore these ideas further by considering the following topics: 1) How is PhD training beneficial (and is a PhD necessary) for individuals who embark in careers teaching health professions students? 2) How do we develop learners to think about teaching as scholarship and why is the PhD useful in this regard? 3) What are examples of successful certificateteaching programs for undergraduate PhD trainees? 4) What are graduates of a teaching fellowship for post-docs currently doing and how was the teaching fellowship instrumental in landing new faculty positions? 5) How can PIs use Individual Development Plans (IDPs) as tools to prepare trainees for teaching careers?
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Chairs Kelly Karpa – Penn State Univ. Coll. of Med. Klarissa Hardy – Lipscomb Univ. Coll. Pharmacy • Why Train Our Trainees to Train? Wayne T. McCormack – Univ. of Florida Coll. of Med. • Giving STEM Doctoral Students a FAST (Future Academic Scholars in Teaching) Start for Academic Careers Henry (Rique) Campa, III – Michigan State Univ. • Your Future Craft: How Gaining Experience in the Classroom is Essential for Life Outside the Lab Johnathan Neiswinger – NIA/NIH • Mentoring Future Educators Cynthia Fuhrmann – Univ. of Massachusetts Med. Sch.
fosters collaboration, which are essential skills for future health care providers. There is a continuum of implementation from embedding one active learning technique in a lecture to fully flipping a session or block. After participating in this session, participants will be able to: 1) Define active learning and explore barriers to active learning in health sciences teaching 2) Describe methods for introducing active learning into large group settings 3) Engage in demonstrations of active learning including the “flipped” classroom and develop strategies for introducing it into their own teaching 4) Discuss the limitations and debunk myths and misunderstandings about active learning and the “flipped” classroom, and summarize best practices.
Chair John L. Szarek – Commonwealth Med. Coll.
Active Learning: What’s Up With That Flipping Classroom? Sunday, March 29, 3:00 pm–5:30 pm Boston Convention Center
Summary The one hour lecture remains the traditional unit of health professions education, particularly for the foundational sciences. A number of factors contribute to the preeminence of the lecture: it is an efficient way to accomplish the goal of knowledge transfer to the student, it is the easiest and most familiar format for students and faculty, and is the most economically feasible mechanism for the college to accomplish its teaching goals. However, it is generally agreed that most lectures limit engagement and therefore promote only “passive” learning and do not promote long-term retention. A variety of active learning techniques have emerged as a way to expand the boundaries of learning within the confines of the traditional large group setting. This approach maximizes the use of student and faculty time and focusses learners on application and retention of new knowledge and skills. In addition, active learning often permits or enables teamwork and
• Doing is Better: The Concept of Active Learning and the Flipped Classroom William B. Jeffries – Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine • The Continuum from a Single Active Learning Technique to the Flipped Classroom: Implementation Along the Continuum John L. Szarek – Commonwealth Med. Coll. • Does It Work: Evaluating Your Flipped Classroom Experiences and Scholarship Kathryn Huggett – Creighton Univ. Sch. of Med. • Facilitated Small Group Activities • Taking it Back Home: Limitations, Myths and Misunderstandings About the Active Learning and the Flipped Classroom Panel: William B. Jeffries, John L. Szarek, Kathryn Huggett
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“Can We Talk?” Strategies for Collaborative Pharmacology Education Tuesday, March 31, 9:30 am–12:00 pm Boston Convention Center
Summary Effective pharmacology teaching is more than a didactic transferal of drug facts; it involves promoting the learning of pharmacotherapeutics in the context of clinical values such as professionalism, communication, teamwork, and tolerance of diversity in opinion or background. Implementing collaborative learning processes is essential to developing group problem-solving skills pertinent to safe patient treatment as decisions are often made clinically by teams of physicians and related healthcare personnel. Evidence suggests that many heads are better than one in improving patient outcomes and decreasing medication errors. Unfortunately, educational processes often promote competition and individual achievements over collaborative group learning. However, healthcare students must learn early in the education process how to put their heads together without banging them in an effort to find collaborative solutions. This symposium discusses some innovative and practical educational strategies that will help pharmacology educators to enhance the collaborative learning of pharmacology including high fidelity simulations, small group clinical cases that promote
rich and diverse discussion, and team-based learning that incorporates both small and large group learning. Both a didactic and a modified team-based learning (TBL) format will be used to engage the audience and enhance their collaborative learning as we concurrently present practical suggestions.
Chairs . Laurel Gorman – Univ. of Central Florida A Coll. of Med Jayne S. Reuben – Univ. of South CarolinaGreenville Sch. of Med. John L. Szarek – Commonwealth Med. Coll. •S imulations as a Tool to Enhance Collaborative Pharmacology Learning in the Context of Professionalism, Interprofessional Communication, and Teamwork John L. Szarek – Commonwealth Med. Coll. •U sing Small Group Case Studies to Teach Pharmacotherapeutics for a Diverse World Jayne S. Reuben and Peggy Wagner – Univ. of South Carolina-Greenville Sch. of Med. •M any Heads Are Better Than One: It’s TBL Time A. Laurel Gorman – Univ. of Central Florida Coll. of Med.
Postdoctoral Trends Highlighted in New Report from the National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences recently released “The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited,” which builds on the 2000 report “Enhancing the Postdoctoral Experience for Scientists and Engineers.” Since the original report, greater numbers of PhDs are pursing postdoctoral training, and for longer periods of time. The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited reexamines postdoctoral programs in the United States, focusing on how postdocs are being guided and managed, how institutional practices have changed, and what happens to postdocs after they complete their training. The book explores trends in postdoctoral practices and provides specific recommendations for institutions, students, mentors, federal agencies, and professional societies. The full text is available from the National Academies Press: www.nap.edu/catalog/18982/the-postdoctoral-experience-revisited. ASPET is particularly interested in what professional societies can do better to support their postdoctoral members. To that end, we are interested in hearing from our postdoctoral members about their experiences – please watch for a survey later this spring.
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Journal News Preventing Plagiarism ASPET’s journals are screening manuscripts for plagiarism through CrossCheck. Using iThenticate text comparison software from iParadigms, manuscripts are compared against the CrossCheck database of current and archival scholarly literature. The full-text content from a wide range of STEM societies and publishers are in the database. The articles from ASPET’s journals have been included for some time. A list of CrossCheck members is at www.crossref.org/crosscheck_members.html. The CrossCheck website notes that “the vast majority of authors and researchers are ethical” but “the intentional misconduct of a single individual can seriously damage the reputation of a department, an institution, and a publication.” By using CrossCheck,
ASPET will work to prevent those less-than-original manuscripts from slipping through the peer review process. For ASPET’s three primary research journals, manuscripts that are accepted at initial submission or that are invited for revision are screened. Pharmacological Reviews manuscripts are screened at two stages because they may undergo extensive revision between original submission and the final manuscript. In consultation with ASPET’s editors, the peer review workflow in Bench>Press was altered to accommodate the new screening step. The process should extend the time to final decision by only a very short time, if at all.
Visual Abstracts
our compositor on the project. ASPET will be only the second HighWire-hosted publisher to provide visual abstracts. Consisting of one image, a visual abstract is uploaded as a data supplement during manuscript submission and is visible to reviewers, the associate editors, and the editor during peer review. Visual abstracts must be submitted in their final form. File and size specifications are available from each journal’s Instructions to Authors. The use of a visual abstract is optional and is in addition to a text abstract. They will be displayed on tables of contents, in the abstract view of an article, and in the HTML full-text view. This new feature became available at the end of February, and the first visual abstract was submitted a couple of days later.
During the 2014 editorial board meetings, a number of attendees asked that ASPET’s journals allow for visual abstracts. Readers of journals published by the American Chemical Society and the American Association for Cancer Research may be familiar with these, which are also called graphic or graphical abstracts. Some readers find that an image provides the gist of an article faster than reading a text and cite them as being particularly useful to scan a table of contents. The Board of Publications Trustees decided last May to add this feature. ASPET’s journals staff have been working since then with HighWire Press and
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Members in the News Achievements, Awards, Promotions, and Scientific Breakthroughs
Dr. Leonard Howell Emory University
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Leonard Howell, PhD, was appointed associate director for scientific programs for the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University on September 1, 2014. In his new position, Howell is working with Yerkes’ new director Paul Johnson, MD, and the center’s leadership to manage the center’s scientific research programs, establish scientific priorities, and enhance support for Yerkes research. Howell, an Emory alumnus, has been a researcher at Yerkes since 1987. He currently serves as chief of the center’s Division of Neuropharmacology and Neurologic Disease and director of the Yerkes Imaging Center. Howell also holds a tenured appointment as professor in the Emory University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a joint appointment as professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology. Howell is an expert in nonhuman primate models of drug addiction. His interests range from basic neurobiology of the central nervous system to medication development
for treatment of cocaine addiction in humans. Howell’s research program focuses on the neuropharmacology of abused stimulants and includes basic neurobiological studies of drug mechanisms as well as medications development to treat stimulant abuse. The program is translational in its focus and bridges preclinical, nonhuman primate models with therapeutic applications in humans. An ASPET member since 1992, Dr. Howell is a member of the ASPET Program Committee and editorial board of JPET. He holds memberships in numerous professional organizations, including the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). He is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD). At ASPET, he is affiliated with the Division for Behavioral Pharmacology, the Division for Neuropharmacology, and the Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology.
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Membership News New Members REGULAR MEMBERS Ravikumar Arvapalli Marshall Univ, WV Mohammad Asghar Univ of Houston, TX Katharina Brandl Univ of California-San Diego Joseph Cotten Massachusetts General Hospital AnnMarie DelliPizzi-Citardi Dominican College, NY Shobhan Gaddameedhi Washington State Univ
Bridget L. Morse Bristol-Myers Squibb, NJ Kendra K. Nordgren Univ of Minnesota Medical School Duluth Amit V. Pandey Univ of Bern-Pediatric Endocrinology, Switzerland John Papageorgiou Washington State Univ Vanishree Rajagopalan Touro Univ California-College of Pharmacy
AFFILIATE MEMBERS Jason Beckwith The Jackson Laboratory, ME Myungwon Jin LG Life Sciences, South Korea Keng-Chang Tsai National Research Inst of Chinese Medicine, Taiwan
POSTDOCTORAL MEMBERS Afolabi C. Akinmoladun Federal Univ of Technology, Nigeria
Gilles Gallant BioMarin, CA
James R. Reed Louisiana State Univ Health Sciences Center
Kurt Giles Inst for Neurodegenerative Diseases-UCSF, CA
Brent A. Reynolds McKnight Brain Institute-Univ of Florida College of Medicine
Howard Gutstein Univ of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Lisa K. Brents Univ of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Paul E. Sawchenko The Salk Institute, CA
Young hee Choi Dongguk Univ Korea, South Korea
Hana M. Hammad The Univ of Jordan
Christopher D. Schmoutz Lousiana State Univ Health Sciences Center
Vincent DiGiacomo Boston Univ School of Medicine, MA
Xiaonan Han Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, OH
Ivan P. Uray Univ of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Vanessa Ho St George’s Univ of London, United Kingdom
Kai Wang Quintiles, Bioanalytical & ADME Laboratories, IN
Daniel J. Lodge Univ of Texas HSC-SA
Wing Tak Jack Wong Houston Methodist Res Inst, TX
Qingkun Liu Stanford Univ Med Sch, CA
Declan P. McKernan National Univ of Ireland-Galway
Yingmin Zhu Univ of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Shuangtao Ma Houston Methodist Res Inst, TX
Henriette E. Meyer zu Schwabedissen Univ of Basel, Switzerland Pranaya Mishra American Univ of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Nicaragua
Sherifat B. Anafi Ahmadu Bello Univ, Nigeria
Claudio A. Erratico Belgium Eman Gohar Univ of Alabama at Birmingham Ghada E. Haggag Univ of Alberta, Canada
Nandini D. Manne Marshall Univ, WV Geeta Rao Univ of Oklahoma HSC
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Kara R. Vogel Washington State Univ Hui Wang Univ of Texas, Houston Lauren S. Whyte Univ of Toronto, Canada
GRADUATE STUDENT MEMBERS Chowdhury S. Abdullah South Dakota State Univ Adewale Bakre College of Medicine, Univ of Ibadan, Nigeria
Abdelaziz Ghanemi Univ of Chinese Academy of Sci- Kunming Inst of Zoology, China Tina Hofmaier Medical Univ Vienna, Austria David N. Huynh Univ de Montreal, Canada Karim S. Ibrahim Alexandria Univ, Egypt Chibueze K. Ikeh Niger Delta Univ, Nigeria Arpit Jain King George’s Medical Univ, India Elimas Jere Univ Teaching Hospital, Zambia
Adam R. Blanden SUNY Upstate Medical Univ, NY
Florence L. Johnson WHRI, QMUL, United Kingdom
Ariana Campos Cypress College, CA
Liliane Menard Univ de Montreal, Canada
Morgan L. Cocke Univ of Texas HSC at San Antonio
Sarah M. Mosaad Suez Canal Univ, Egypt
Cedrick M. Daphney Mercer Univ, GA
Obinna N. Obianom Univ of Maryland
Pradeep Dwivedi King George Medical Univ, India
Lesley D. O’Brien Virginia Commonwealth Univ
Dominique B. Figueroa Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, MD
Shekins O. Okere Ahmadu Bello Univ, Nigeria
Are you not receiving ASPET emails? Be sure to add us to your address book or safe sender list! Whitelist our sending email addresses aspet@multibriefs.com and membermail@aspet.ccsend.com so our emails get to your inbox. If you have any questions, email us at membership@aspet.org.
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
Carrie E. Rubel Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill Kennedy Saini Univ of Zambia Mohammad Saleem Univ of Houston, TX Xitao Wang Univ of Houston, TX
UNDERGRADUATE MEMBERS Syed Ameena Afrose Deccan School of Pharmacy, India Aila Haraleli Chicago State Univ, IL Jose O. Mantilla Univ de Los Andes, Colombia Christopher R. Stang Univ of Findlay, OH David Tandio King’s College London, UK Kyleigh A. Twaroski Univ of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
In Sympathy ASPET notes with sympathy the passing of the following members: Morton E. Goldberg Mmalebuso L. Mokoena Raymond H. Lindsay
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Member Benefit Highlight: ASPET Journals Are you taking full advantage of your ASPET membership? ASPET’s journals provide the Society’s members with valuable benefits.
Full Journal Access Membership includes access to the four journals Drug Metabolism and Disposition, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Molecular Pharmacology, and Pharmacological Reviews. Members can access these highly rated journals by logging in as a member at the ASPET website www.aspet.org/publications.aspx or by activating a member subscription and creating a separate user name and password to log on at the journals. Members can also access the mobile version of each journal through a member subscription. Whether logging on through the ASPET site or through a membership subscription at the desktop or mobile sites, members can access the full content of ASPET’s journals from anywhere they have internet access. ASPET staff is available at subscriptions@aspet.org to help with any access questions.
Reduced Publication Fees Have you ever wanted to publish your article in an ASPET journal? As a member you get significant discounts to publish your paper. The $75 manuscript submission fee for DMD, JPET, and MOL is waived for ASPET members. In addition, page charges are only $50 per page for members versus $90 for nonmembers. With articles averaging 10 pages, publishing one paper a year in any of the ASPET journals will save a member $475 – almost three times the cost of membership dues. Members also get a 10% discount on author publication charges when publishing in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, the open access journal published jointly by ASPET, British Pharmacological Society, and Wiley. Take advantage of the journals-related benefits of ASPET membership!
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ASPET at Pharmacology 2014 The Society expanded its efforts to reach new members last December by exhibiting at the British Pharmacological Society’s meeting, Pharmacology 2014, in London. Held December 16-18, the meeting attracted approximately 900 attendees at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, across the street from Westminster Abbey. Researchers came primarily from the UK but also Europe, the US, and other parts of the world. ASPET was a bronze level sponsor of the meeting and had a well situated booth (or “stand” as it is called in the UK) in the exhibit area staffed by Judy Siuciak and Rich Dodenhoff, ASPET’s executive officer and journals director, respectively. Twenty-four people completed membership applications and many more stopped to discuss the Society’s programs, journals, travel awards, and member benefits. A Management Committee meeting for the ASPET/BPS/Wiley jointly published journal Pharmacology Research & Perspectives was also held during Pharmacology 2014. Many attendees were surprised to learn of the geographic diversity of ASPET’s membership and that the American Society welcomes members from every country.
Thank You to All Participants of the MGM Program This year we recruited 20 new members through the ASPET MemberGet-a-Member Program. All participants received an ASPET lunch bag and John Hepler was the grand prize winner of the $150.00 Amazon.com gift card. A big thank you to all members listed below who participated in this program to make it a success!
• Lauren Aleksunes • William Banks • Hamid Boulares • Meritxell Canals • Ross Corriden
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
• Ahmed El-Yazbi • Annette Fleckenstein • R. Benjamin Free • Smita Ghare • James Hammond
• John Hepler • Popat Patil • Esther Penni Black • Benita Sjogren • Jeff Stevens
• Douglas Tilley • Andrew Wiemer
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VISIT THE ASPET CAREER CENTER TODAY! WWW.ASPET.ORG/CAREERCENTER/
WHAT YOU NEED: ASPET’S CAREER CENTER HAS IT Jobseekers:
Employers:
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Sign up for automatic email notifications of new jobs that match your criteria
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ASPET is committed to your success: The ASPET Career Center is the best resource for matching job seekers and employers in the pharmacology and related health science fields. Our vast range of resources and tools will help you look for jobs, find great employees, and proactively manage your career goals.
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3995 Main Office: 301.634.7060 www.aspet.org
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Division News 2015 Division Elections The 2015 elections concluded with an enthusiastic response from ASPET members for the following Divisions. • Division for Behavioral Pharmacology • Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology • Division for Drug Metabolism • Division for Molecular Pharmacology • Division for Toxicology Please join us in welcoming all newly elected chairs and secretary-treasurers to their respective Division’s executive committee. The new officers will begin their terms on July 1, 2015.
Division for Behavioral Pharmacology Secretary/Treasurer-Elect
Chair-Elect
Bill Fantegrossi, PhD Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Arkansas
Carol Paronis, PhD Assistant Professor of Biopsychology, Harvard Medical School
Division for Cardiovascular Pharmacology Secretary/Treasurer-Elect
Chair-Elect Walter J. Koch, PhD, FAHA William Wikoff Smith Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine; Professor and Chairperson, Department of Pharmacology; Director, Center for Translational Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine
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Sarah Lindsey, PhD, FAHA Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Tulane University
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Division for Drug Metabolism Secretary/Treasurer-Elect
Chair-Elect Tim Carlson, PhD Scientific Director, Pharmacokinetics and Metabolism, Amgen
John P. Harrelson, PhD Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pacific University
Division for Molecular Pharmacology Secretary/Treasurer-Elect
Chair-Elect Jin Zhang, PhD Professor of Pharmacology, Department of Pharmacology & Molecular Sciences; Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience and Department of Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering
Katerina Akassoglou, PhD Professor, Department of Neurology; Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease; Director, Center for In Vivo Imaging Research, Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco
Division for Toxicology Secretary/Treasurer-Elect
Chair-Elect Serrine S. Lau, PhD Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, University of Arizona; Director, Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center; Director, Arizona Board of Regents Center for Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, University of Arizona
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Alison Harrill, PhD Assistant Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, Regulatory Sciences Program, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
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Division for Neuropharmacology Announces Winners of the 2015 Early Career Investigator Awards The Division for Neuropharmacology is pleased to announce their 2015 Early Career Investigator Award winners. Out of several outstanding applicants, the first place went to Daniel J. Lodge from the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. The award recognizes and honors a young investigator who is working in any area of neuropharmacology and is open to early career stage investigators from all types of organizations, including academia, industry, private, or government institutions. The two runners-up are Guillermo Yudowski from the University of Puerto Rico and Matthew James Kennedy from the University of Colorado, Denver.
Daniel Lodge, PhD University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX Daniel J. Lodge obtained his PhD in pharmacology from Monash University, Australia and completed his postdoctoral training in the lab of Dr. Anthony Grace at the
University of Pittsburgh. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. His research is focused on understanding the neurophysiological alterations that lead to psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia. The broader aim of this work is to improve current therapeutic approaches. He has recently published on a number of novel approaches including deep brain stimulation (a surgical approach used clinically to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease) and a cell based transplantation technique that attempts to replace the damaged cells thought to contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The award winners will receive a plaque, free registration to the EB meeting, and up to $1000 to use toward attending the subsequent meeting. In addition, they become a member of that year’s program committee with the expectation that they will put together an early career award symposium on a theme of their choosing. The inaugural award will be presented at the ASPET Annual Meeting at EB 2015.
Have You Joined a Division? Take full advantage of ASPET Membership by joining a Division! • Participate in creating scientific programming for the annual meeting • Network with people in your field at mixers, Division programs, and on each Division’s LinkedIn group • Participate in running the Division and planning activities • Receive special notices about events and activities of interest in your field
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Division for Toxicology Announces Winners of the 2015 Junior and Career Investigator Awards The Division for Toxicology is pleased to announce its 2015 award winners. The division’s Junior Investigator Award was presented to Jason Richardson from Rutgers University to recognize his original research in the area of toxicology as an early career researcher. The Career Investigator Award was presented to Curt Omiecinski from Penn State University to recognize his original research contributions to toxicology as an established researcher.
Jason Richardson, PhD Rutgers University Jason Richardson is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute. He received his graduate and doctoral degrees from Mississippi State University and completed postdoctoral training at Emory University. Dr. Richardson currently serves as director of the Joint Graduate Program in Toxicology at Rutgers University. His research is focused on geneenvironment interactions in neurological disease. He received the Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Award from NIEHS and a Young Scientist Award from ASPET. Through the conduct of basic, clinical, and epidemiological studies, Dr. Richardson has contributed several significant findings that have broad implications for environmental health. These include the identification of specific pesticides linked to Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, the association of developmental
pesticide exposure in ADHD, and the role of ER stress in pesticide-induced behavioral dysfunction. Dr. Richardson serves on the editorial boards of several major scientific journals; he also serves as a reviewer for several NIH panels, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson Disease Research, Health Canada, and the United Kingdom Parkinson Disease Society. Most recently he was named to the Environmental Health Sciences Review Committee at NIEHS and the Committee on Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions at the National Academy of Science.
Curt Omiecinski, PhD Penn State University Curt Omiecinski is professor of Veterinary & Biomedical Sciences and the H. Thomas and Dorothy Willits Hallowell Chair in the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Center for Molecular Toxicology & Carcinogenesis at Penn State University. He received his doctoral degree in pharmacology from the University of Washington in Seattle and then completed postdoctoral training in biochemistry at the University of Vermont. He began his academic career in the Department of Environmental Health at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington before moving to Penn State. Dr. Omiecinski’s research is focused in molecular genetics, genetic polymorphism, and the regulation of the xenobiotic biotransformation network of genes, in particular epoxide hydrolases and the cytochrome P450s. His laboratory was the first to identify functional genetic polymorphisms in the
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human microsomal epoxide hydrolase gene and among the first to use transgenic mouse models in toxicological research. His research has been continually funded by grants from the NIH. Dr. Omiecinski has received numerous awards for his work including the Burroughs Wellcome Toxicology Scholar Award, the SOT Zeneca Scholars Award, and the SOT Board of Publications Best Paper Award. He was also recently elected a fellow in the Academy of Toxicological Sciences. He has been actively engaged in a number of
scientific societies including SOT and ASPET and previously served as Chair of ASPET’s Toxicology Division. He serves on the editorial board of a number of top quality scientific journals and on various NIH review panels. Dr. Omiecinski is also actively involved in research training and teaching. The award winners will receive a $500 reward, a plaque, complimentary registration, and partial travel expenses to EB 2015. The inaugural awards will be presented at the ASPET Annual Meeting at EB 2015.
Division for Pharmacology Education Announces Winners of the 2015 Travel Awards for Pharmacology Educators The primary goal of this travel award is to promote participation in an ASPET Meeting by pharmacology educators and to foster career development in pharmacology education. This award is intended to help defray the costs of travel and housing to attend the ASPET Annual Meeting at EB 2015. Each year, two awards are given: one to an early career candidate and one to a senior candidate. ASPET congratulates this year’s winners:
Diane M. Calinski, PhD Manchester University College of Pharmacy Diane Calinski is an assistant professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Manchester University College of Pharmacy in Fort Wayne, IN. She is the presenting author for a poster entitled “Linking Pharmacology to Clinical Therapeutics: An Interdisciplinary Laboratory
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
Experience in Optimizing Antiplatelet Therapy using Pharmacogenetic Data”, which will be presented at EB 2015.
Rochelle SchwartzBloom, PhD Duke University Rochelle SchwartzBloom is a professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, and, director of the Duke Center for Science Education at Duke University in Durham, NC. She is the presenting author for a poster entitled “LEAP: Launch into Education About Pharmacology - A Pharmacology-based Enrichment Program for College Students at Duke”, which will be presented at EB 2015.
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Division for Integrative Systems, Translational and Clinical Pharmacology Announces Name Change We are pleased to announce a name change to the Division for Integrative Systems, Translational and Clinical Pharmacology (ISPTCP) to the Division for Translational and Clinical Pharmacology (TCP). The division’s executive committee believes this shortened name will facilitate recruitment of new members and also provide easier recognition of the goals and mission of the division.
Figure 1: Translational research integrates data derived from molecular, cellular, tissue and integrative systems approaches in a way that is more likely to predict the clinical response to experimental therapeutics.Clinical research leads to new therapeutics.Biomarkers are predictors of drug-target engagement or disease progression and provide an important link between preclinical and clinical research. In clinical postmarketing studies new mechanistic insights can feed back (arrows) into preclinical research for second generation drugs or new targets.
The new name, Translational and Clinical Pharmacology: • Reduces the complexity of the division name and will be more instantly identifiable to non-members, who may then become future members. • Is inclusive of the diversity of our member’s research expertise, including integrative systems biology. While there have been considerable concerns about the loss/lack of whole animal in vivo approaches in the last decade, some of those have abated. That important aspect has largely been incorporated into the concept of ‘translational pharmacology’ (Figure 1). • Represents the fundamental mission of our division to promote basic research translation to clinical utility for the improvement of health and discovery of new medicines to cure diseases. It encompasses both clinicians and patient-oriented researchers whose approaches are conceptually Bedside-toBench-to-Bedside research. Members of the division were asked to provide feedback on the name change and based on positive feedback, the name change was presented to the ASPET Council and approved on January 28th, 2015.
New in 2015: Division for Cancer Pharmacology The ASPET Council has approved the formation of a new division for Cancer Pharmacology. More information about the newly formed division will be coming soon. Stay tuned for details!
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Chapter News Upstate New York Pharmacology Society 4th Annual Scientific Meeting The Upstate New York Pharmacology Society (UNYPS) Chapter of ASPET will hold its 4th Annual Scientific Meeting on Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, NY. The theme of the scientific meeting is “G-Protein Coupled Receptor Signaling Systems in Health and Disease.” Dr. J. Silvio Gutkind is the keynote speaker of the meeting and will speak on G-protein coupled receptors and cancer. Dr. Gutkind is currently chief of the Oral Pharyngeal Cancer Branch of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. His current research focuses Keynote Speaker on how cancer cells gain the
ability to co-opt the potent pro-migratory activity of chemokines and their G-protein coupled receptors to metastasize to distant sites. These advances have enabled identification of novel mechanism-based anti-cancer treatments. Special invited thematic speakers are Xianhua Piao MD, PhD of the Harvard Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital and Peter A. Friedman PhD of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Information about the 4th Annual UNYPS Meeting including program, registration, abstract submission, and map links for the University of Rochester Medical Center can be found at the chapter’s 2015 annual meeting website: www.aspet.org/2015_ UNYPS_Annual_Meeting.
About ASPET Chapters ASPET has three regional chapters that provide opportunities, particularly for students, to meet at regional venues to discuss their research. Poster competitions for students and postdoctoral fellows are a feature of the regional chapter meetings. The Great Lakes Chapter (GLC) serves areas surrounding the Chicago metro area to promote scientific communication among local research scientists and pharmacologists. To learn more, please visit: www.aspet.org/GLC/. The Mid-Atlantic Pharmacology Society (MAPS) serves the mid-Atlantic region around the greater Philadelphia metro area. The chapter provides scientists in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware a forum to discuss recent advances in pharmacology, related medical disciplines, and therapeutics. To learn more, please visit: www.aspet.org/MAPS/. The Upstate New York Pharmacology Society (UNYPS) serves the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany, NY. It provides opportunities for scientific exchange to pharmacologists at institutions and research organizations in upstate New York. To learn more, please visit: www.aspet.org/UNYPS.
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SAVE THE DATE – June 26, 2015 28th Annual Meeting
Great Lakes Chapter of ASPET Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University Hughes Auditorium, Lurie Building
303 E Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60611
SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM Epigenetics and Human Disease: From Etiology to New Therapeutics Keynote address John W. Christman, MD
Director of the Critical Care Signature Program Chief of the Section of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center “Epigenetic Regulation of Macrophage Gene Expression in ARDS Associated with Severe Sepsis”
Gary Chiang, PhD
Sr. Group Leader at AbbVie, Greater Chicago Area “Targeting Histone Methyltransferases in Cancer”
Tao Pan, PhD
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The University of Chicago “Dynamic RNA Modifications in the Regulation of Gene Expression”
Ali Shilatifard, PhD
Chairman, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Robert H. Lurie NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine “Enhancer Malfunction in Cancer”
Jindan Yu, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine-Hematology/Oncology Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine “IncRNA Regulation of Androgen Receptor Signaling and Prostate Cancer” Young Investigator Symposium featuring early career scientists Lunch and Learn Workshop - Meet with scientists in different fields Poster Presentation Deadline for abstract submission June 15, 2015 Vendor Exhibits For more information go to www.aspet.org/GLC Meeting
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Meetings & Congresses March 2015 Gut Microbiota Modulation of Host Physiology: The Search for Mechanism www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1342
Mar. 1–6, Keystone, CO Heart Disease & Regeneration: Insights from Development www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1319
Mar. 1–6, Copper Mountain, CO Amer. Soc. for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics
6th World Cong. on Women’s Mental Health
Mechanisms of Pro-Inflammatory Diseases
www.congre.co.jp/iawmh2015
Mar. 22–25, Tokyo, Japan
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1334
54th Ann. Mtg. of the Soc. of Toxicology
Apr. 19–24, Olympic Valley, CA
www.toxicology.org/ai/meet/am.asp
Mar. 22–26, San Diego, CA
Exploiting the New Pharmacology & Application to Drug Discovery
Cartilage Biology & Pathology www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=13111
www.bps.ac.uk/meetings/ NewPharmaDrugDiscovery
Mar. 22–27, Galveston, TX
Apr. 20–21, Edinburgh, UK
Experimental Biology 2015
The Human Proteome
experimentalbiology.org/2015/Home.aspx
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1259
Mar. 28–Apr. 1, Boston, MA
Apr. 24–29, Stockholm, Sweden
www.ascpt.org/ASCPT-2015-Annual-Meeting
Mar. 3–7, New Orleans, LA
April 2015
Hybrid Methods in Structural Biology
17th Intl. Neuroscience Winter Conf.
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1285
www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin. aspx?EventID=1579592
Apr. 7–11, 2014, Sölden, Austria
Mar. 4–8, Tahoe City, CA
Mechanisms of HIV Persistence: Implications for a Cure www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1345
Apr. 26–May 1, Boston, MA
14th Ann. New England Science Symp. ENDO 2015
www.New EnglandScienceSymposium.org
www.endocrine.org/endo-2015
Apr. 11, Boston, MA
Mar. 5–8, San Diego, CA
May 2015
BNA2015: Festival of Neuroscience
ARVO Ann. Mtg.
Soc. for Brain Mapping & Therapeutics
www.bna.org.uk/events/?page=2
www.arvo.org/Annual_Meeting/
www.worldbrainmapping.org/
Apr. 12–15, Edinburgh, UK
May 3–7, Denver, CO
24rd Ann. Cong. for Endosurgery in Children
Ann. APHMG Workshop & Special Interest Groups Mtg.
www.ipeg.org/meeting/
www.aphmg.org/#!2015-workshop/c1n4f
April 14–18, Nashville, TN
May 6–8, Clearwater, FL
Amer. Assn. of Cancer Res. Ann. Mtg.
AAI Ann. Mtg.
www.aacr.org/Meetings/Pages/ MeetingDetail.aspx?EventItemID=25#. VNT5IGc5CUk
aai.org/meetings/index.html
April 18–22, Philadelphia, PA
Hypoxia: From Basic Mechanisms to Therapeutics
Mar. 16–20, Tahoe City, CA
Crossroads of Lipid Metabolism & Diabetes
9th World Immune Regulation Mtg.
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1317
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1323
Mar. 6–8, Los Angeles, CA European Col. of Neuropsychopharmacol. www.ecnp.eu/meetings/workshops/ workshop2015.aspx
Mar 12–15, Nice, France Pathways of Neurodevelopmental Disorders www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1359
www.wirm.ch/
Mar. 18–21, Davos, Switzerland
Apr. 19–24, Copenhagen, Denmark
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May 8–12, New Orleans, LA
May 12–17, Dublin, Ireland
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22nd Int’l Stress & Behavior Neuroscience & Biopsychiatry Conf.
Amer. Diabetes Assn. 75th Scientific Sessions
Summer School on Stress
www.stress-and-behavior.com
professional.diabetes.org/Congress_Display. aspx?TYP=9&CID=95010
June 29–July 2, Grenoble, France
May 16–19, St. Petersburg, Russia
www.stresseducation.org/
June 5–9, Boston, MA Digestive Disease Week 2015 www.ddw.org/
MicroRNAs & Noncoding RNAs in Cancer
May 16–19, Washington, DC
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1316
Anticonvulsant Drug Development (ADD) Program Symp.
June 7–12, Keystone, CO
www.addsymposium.com
May 17–20, Park City, UT
2015 AAPS Nat. Biotechnol. Conf. www.aaps.org/nationalbiotech/
ASCEPT-BPS Joint Scientific Mtg. ascept-bps2015.com/?_ cldee=a3NAYnBzLmFjLnVr&urlid=1
May 19–21, Hong Kong, China Intl. Behavioural & Neurogenetics Soc. Ann. Mtgs.
June 8–10, San Francisco, CA Apoptotic Cell Recognition & Clearance: Responses to Apoptotic Cells Leading to Inflammatory Resolution & Pathogenesis www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=14625
June 13–14, Biddeford, ME
www.ibangs.com/
May 19–23, Uppsala, Sweden
DIA 2015
Canadian Pain Soc. Ann. Mtg.
www.diahome.org/en-US/Flagship-Meetings/ DIA-Annual-Meeting/About-the-Conference. aspx
www.canadianpainsociety.ca/en/meetings_ cps.html
May 20–23, 2013, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada Assn. for Psychological Science Ann. Mtg. www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/ convention#.VFFSwmctCUk
June 14–18, Washington, DC Apoptotic Cell Recognition & Clearance: Physiological Significance & Pathological Consequences www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=13127
June 14–19, Biddeford, ME
May 21–24, New York City, NY 2015 Int’l Narcotics Res. Conf. Cannabinoid Function in the CNS: Endocannabinoid Signaling in Neurobiology: From Molecules to Networks
www.inrcworld.org/2015/2015mtg.htm
www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=14641
May 23–24, Lucca, Italy
www.keystonesymposia.org/ index.cfm?e=web.Meeting. Program&meetingid=1322
5th World Cong. On ADHD
June 19–24, Breckenridge, CO
June 15–19, Phoenix, AZ Autophagy
www.adhd-congress.org
May 28–31, Glasgow, Scotland Amer. Soc. for Microbiology 115th General Mtg. gm.asm.org/
Animal-Microbe Symbioses: Identifying the Common Language of Host-Microbe Associations www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=16842
June 21–26, Waterville Valley, NH
May 30–June 2, New Orleans, LA 5th Int’l Regional Stress & Behavior Neuroscience & Biopsychiatry Conf.
June 2015 24th Ann. Mtg. of the Int’l Behavioral Neuroscience Soc. www.ibnsconnect.org/?page=2015_Meeting
June 2–7, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
www.stressandbehavior.com
June 22–24, Miami, FL
July 2015 Soc. for Develop. Biology 74rd Ann. Mtg. www.sdbonline.org/2015mtg
July 9–13, Snowbird, UT Tuberculosis Drug Discovery & Development: New Strategies to Fight an Old Enemy www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=15775
July 11–12, Girona, Spain The TGF-ß Superfamily: Signaling in Development and Disease www.faseb.org/SRC-TGFB/Home.aspx
July 12–17, Snowmass, CO Drug Metabolism: Solving Knowledge Gaps in Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetic Prediction, Improving Translational Medicine www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=11186
July 12–17, Holderness, NH Melatonin Biology: Actions & Therapeutics www.faseb.org/SRC-Mela/Home.aspx
July 19–24, Lisbon, Portugal Protein Kinases & Protein Phosphorylation www.faseb.org/SRC-PKPP/Home.aspx
July 19–24, Itasca, IL Protein Lipidation, Signaling & Membrane Domains www.faseb.org/SRC-ProLip/Home.aspx
July 19–24, Saxtons River, VT 15th Int’l Fragile X Conf. www.fragilex.org/community/internationalfragile-x-conference
July 20–24, San Antonio, TX 29th Symp. of the Protein Soc. www.barcelocongresos.com.es/protein2015/ welcome.html
July 22–25, Barcelona, Spain
Int’l Soc. for Stem Cell Res. www.isscr.org/home/annual-meeting/ isscr2015
June 24–27, Stockholm, Sweden
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Int’l Acad. of Cardiology Ann. Sci. Sessions 2015/20th World Cong. of Heart Disease
Catecholamines: Frontiers in Catecholamine Function from Synapses to Disease
www.cardiologyonline.com/wchd2015/index. html
www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=14061
September 2015 Amer. Physiological Soc. 14th Ann. Conf. on Endothelin
Aug. 8–9, Newry, ME
www.the-aps.org/et-14
6th Int’l Neuroscience & Biological Psychiatry ISBS Conf
Cellular & Molecular Mechanisms of Toxicity: Advanced In Vitro Models in Mechanistic Toxicology
2015 DIA/FDA Oligonucleotide-based Therapeutic Conf.
www.stressandbehavior.com
www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=15534
July 26–27, Kobe, Japan
Aug. 8–9, Andover, NH
Sept. 9–11, Washington DC
42st Ann. Mtg. & Expo. of the Controlled Release Soc.
Molecular & Systems Integration of Genomic & Nongenomic Steroid Hormone Action
67th Clin. Endocrinology Update
July 25–27, Vancouver, BC
www.controlledreleasesociety.org/meetings/ annual/overview/Pages/default.aspx
www.faseb.org/SRC-Steroid/Home.aspx
Sept. 2–5, Savannah, GA
bit.ly/16NZaOM
www.endocrine.org/ceu
Sept. 10–12, Miami, FL
July 26–29, Edinburgh, Scotland
Aug. 9–14, Big Sky, MT
Eurotox: 51st Cong. of the Europ. Socs. of Toxicol.
Japan Neurosci. Soc. 37th Ann. Mtg.
NAD+ Metabolism & Signaling
www.eurotox2015.com
www.neuroscience2015.jnss.org/e/outline. html
www.faseb.org/SRC-NAD/Home.aspx
Aug. 9–14, Timmendorfer Strand, Germany
July 28–31, Kobe, Japan Hormone-Dependent Cancers: Mechanisms to Tailored Therapeutics www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=13373
August 2015 Epigenetics: Mechanisms of Mitotic & Meiotic Epigenetic Inheritance www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=17018
Aug. 1–2, Waltham, MA Gastrointestinal Tract XVI: GI Homeostasis: The Microbiome & the Barrier, Development, & Disease www.faseb.org/SRC-Gastro/Home.aspx
Aug. 2–7, Steamboat Springs, CO Amer. Psychological Assn. Ann. Conv. www.apa.org/convention
Aug. 6–9, Toronto, ON
The Pharmacologist • March 2015
Aug. 16–21, Newry, ME Histone Deacetylases & Sirtuins in Biology, Disease, & Aging www.faseb.org/SRC-HDAC/Home.aspx
Sept. 13–16, Porto, Portugal 21st Scientific Symp of the Austrian Pharmacological Soc. www.bps.ac.uk/meetings/14844de2424
Sept. 16–18, Graz, Austria The Mobile Genome: Genetic & Physiological Impacts of Transposable Elements bit.ly/1DIHbDq
Aug. 16–21, Timmendorfer Strand, Germany
Sept. 16–19, Heidelberg, Germany
Lysophospholipids & Related Mediators – From Bench to Clinic
Int’l Soc. for Eye Res. XXII Biennial Mtg.
www.faseb.org/SRC-LysoLipid/Home.aspx
Aug. 23–28, Banff, Canada
www.iserbiennialmeeting.org
Sept. 26–30, Tokyo, Japan Amer. College of Clin. Pharmacology Ann. Mtg. accp1.org/2015_meetings_welcome.shtml
Sept. 27–29, San Francisco, CA