February 2025 News and Publications

February 2025

Grants & Contracts:

Toni Antalis, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and Center for Vascular Biology and Inflammatory Diseases, received five-year, $2.1 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for “An engineered prodrug for inhibition of cancer growth and metastasis.”

Toni Antalis, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and Center for Vascular Biology and Inflammatory Diseases, received four-year, $2.2 million R01 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) for “Modulating the resolution of angiogenesis and normalization of the vasculature for therapeutic benefit.”

Toni Antalis, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and Center for Vascular Biology and Inflammatory Diseases, received five-year, $2.3 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for “Chemotherapy induced MASP activation and ovarian cancer metastasis.”

Matthew C. Trudeau, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, received an NIH/NIGMS R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) grant titled “Conformational Dynamics and Regulatory Mechanisms in the KCNH Family of Ion Channels” for 5 years. The yearly amount was $427,625 and the total amount was $2,138,125.

Publications:

Robert Bloch, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Drug Development was a co-coauthor of “The juxtamembrane sequence of small ankyrin 1 mediates the binding of its cytoplasmic domain to SERCA1 and is required for inhibitory activity” which was published in J Biol Chem on January 23, 2025.

Stephanie Pollitt, PhD, Postdoctoral fellow, Aaron Levy PhD, Research Associate, Michael Anderson, and Thomas Blanpied, PhD, Professor and Vice-chair, all in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, were co-authors of “Large Donor CRISPR for Whole-CDS Replacement of Cell Adhesion Molecule LRRTM2” which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience on January 7, 2025.

Aaron Levy PhD, Research Associate, Sarah Metzbower, PhD, Poorna Dharmasri, graduate student, and Thomas Blanpied, PhD, Professor and Vice-chair, all in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, were among the co-authors of “Distinct Active Zone Protein Machineries Mediate Ca²⁺ Channel Clustering and Vesicle Priming at Hippocampal Synapses” which was published in Nature Neuroscience on August 19, 2024.