With the ultimate goal to discover a drug
that one day treats alcoholism, a University of Houston (UH) pharmacy professor
is working on pinpointing the mechanisms in the brain that respond to alcohol.
Joydip Das, a medicinal chemist and pharmacologist in the UH College of Pharmacy, received a three-year, $450,000 grant this year from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In the end, his team hopes their research will help lead them to a way to prevent people from drinking in 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."
More specifically, 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.
He says that it's difficult to pinpoint where alcohol acts and what its target is, so 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. How the alcohol molecule binds with the target is the key," Das said. "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 group's next steps will be to progress to animal trials with the mouse model and then ultimately to clinical trials with humans. Working with Das on this project are postdoctoral fellow Satyabrata Pany and undergraduate student Khoi Ly.
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NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: A high-resolution photo of Joydip Das and his team is available to media by contacting Lisa Merkl.
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a comprehensive national research institution serving the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. UH serves more than 38,500 students in the nation's fourth-largest city, located in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region of the country.
About the UH College of Pharmacy
For more than 60 years, the University of Houston College of Pharmacy has shaped aspiring pharmacists, scientists and researchers. The college offers graduate degrees in pharmacy administration, pharmacology and pharmaceutics, a professional pharmacy degree and combined professional/graduate degrees. With facilities on the UH campus and in the Texas Medical Center, the UH College of Pharmacy is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education.
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