University of Houston College of Pharmacy - the STEM Digital Village

Alcohol Mechanism Project Draws NIH Support for Das
By Lisa Merkl
With the ultimate goal to discover a
drug that one day treats alcoholism, UH
College of Pharmacy Assistant Professor
Joydip Das is working on pinpointing the
mechanisms in the brain that respond to
alcohol.
Das recently received a three-year,
$450,000 grant from the National Institute
on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. In the
end, his team hopes their research will
help lead them to a way to prevent people
from drinking to excess.
“Defining targets and elucidating the
molecular mechanism of their actions is
needed for effective intervention,” Das
said. “Once we understand the target,
then we design drugs based on that
target.”
Das explained that addictions are related
to the brain, with protein kinase C (PKC)
– particularly of the PKCε subtype –
being mainly expressed in the brain and
playing a key role in this process. Previous
observations have indicated as much as a
75 percent reduction of alcohol drinking
in mice using knockout technology,
demonstrating that knocking out the
PKCε protein cuts desire.
Jerry Powers photo
Assistant Professor Joydip Das, Ph.D., has received
a $450,000 grant from the National Institute
of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse to define the
molecular mechanisms by which alcohols exert
their action on the signaling pathways in the brain.
As it’s difficult to pinpoint where alcohol
acts and what its target is, his team’s
objective is to find the target and then
determine how it interacts with ion
channels to affect the addiction.
“We’re looking at the significance of the
interaction between the alcohol molecule
and PKCε protein,” Das said. “How the
alcohol molecule binds with the target is
the key. This binding has implications in
addiction, so our intent is to design drugs
to curb the desire for more than a small
amount of alcohol so that people stay
away from excessive drinking.”
Trained at MIT and having worked in the
anesthesia department at Massachusetts
General Hospital, Das has a particular
interest in this area, saying that alcohol
also is an anesthetic, with PKCε being one
of its many targets.
“Our focus is brain chemistry. In our
study, we have seen that PKCε and
alcohol interacts and have pinpointed
the binding side,” he said. “Now, we must
determine the molecular mechanism of
the interaction. To do so, we are looking
at how those two interact in the neuronal
cells, which are the impulse-conducting
cells in the brain.”
The next steps for the group, which
includes postdoctoral fellow Satyabrata
Pany and UH undergraduate student
Khoi Ly, will be to progress to animal
trials with the mouse model and then
ultimately to clinical trials with humans.
Graduate Students Earn International, National Travel Awards
Two UH College of Pharmacy graduate students recently earned
travel awards to international and national meetings, where
they delivered oral presentations on their research findings in
collaboration with UHCOP faculty members.
Pharmacy Administration doctoral student
Mo Yang, who received her M.S. in Pharmacy
Administration in August, was selected to
deliver an oral presentation of her work
with Associate Professor Amalia M. Issa,
Ph.D., M.P.H., at the International Society
for Pharmacoepidemiology’s 26th Annual
Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology and
Therapeutic Risk Management Aug. 19-22 in
Brighton, U.K.
Yang
The presentation abstract, entitled “Assessment of the costeffectiveness
of pharmacogenomic diagnostics for breast cancer,”
will be published in a 2010 issue of Pharmacoepidemiology
& Drug Safety. Yang and Issa conducted an evaluation and
comparison of the cost-effectiveness of two commercially
available gene expression-profiling tests – OncotypeDx
and MammaPrint – used to predict the likelihood of breast
cancer recurrence and guide adjuvant treatment decisions to
potentially spare patients at low risk for recurrence the toxicity
and morbidity of chemotherapy. Their analysis concluded that
MammaPrint is more cost-effective than OncotypeDx.
Pharmacology graduate student Odelia
Bongmba was selected to deliver an oral
presentation of her work with Assistant
Professor MariVi Tejada-Simon, Ph.D.,
M.Ed. (’07), at the Society for Advancement
of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science
meeting Sept. 30-Oct. 3 in Anaheim, Calif.
Bongmba’s travel award from the Federation of Tucker
American Societies for Experimental Biology is
supported by the Minority Access to Research Careers Program,
a National Institute of General Medical Sciences initiative.
Her presentation abstract, entitled “Inactivation of the rac1
gene affects the formation of dendritic spines,” revealed that
suppression of rac1 gene in mice alters the normal morphology of
neuronal connections. The results suggest that Rac1 also might
be responsible for the distorted connectivity observed in mental
retardation and other neurological disorders affecting learning.
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