Frank H. Westheimer Prize Lecture: Bryan Roth (UNC)

Title: Synthetic and Chemical Neurobiology

BLR is the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, UNC Chapel Hill Medical School. Dr. Roth is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. 

From AAAS, "Roth pioneered novel technologies to discover how neurotransmitters and many drugs act on G protein-coupled receptors. His work has also revealed new allosteric modulators for orphan and pharmacologically 'dark' GPCRs. He invented the widely used chemogenetic technology dubbed DREADDs (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs). He demonstrated that DREADDs afford simple non-invasive ways to both silence and activate genetically-defined neurons. This technology is used routinely by 100's of laboratories world-wide and has been recognized as a major technological advance fueling neuroscience, biochemistry, pharmacology and physiology."