51小黄车opioid research featured on 'NECN'
On Friday, November 12 NECN aired a special report about addiction research at UNE. The cable news network interviewed Ed Bilsky, Ph.D., vice-president of research and scholarship and Karen Houseknecht, Ph.D., M.S., B.S., professor of Pharmacology, about their quest to develop opioid drugs for the treatment of chronic pain with fewer adverse effects, including addiction. Bilsky and Houseknecht are among a team of investigators to recently receive a $4.5 million grant to support the research.
The news story also highlighted the fruit fly lab run by Geoffrey Ganter, Ph.D., professor of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, who was recently awarded a $443,490 Academic Research Enhancement Award. Ganter and his students are manipulating the genetic code of the flies to study how the genes and proteins respond to injury. That information has helped them identify new targets for drug discovery that are also found in higher-level vertebrate animals including humans. Those findings will help inform the research for scientists like Bilsky and Houseknechtk, who are studying the interactions between the different types of opioid receptors to maximize the pain relieving properties of morphine while minimizing the traditional side effects of this class of drugs.