Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology

Our mission is to educate medical and graduate students at the Chicago Medical School in cellular pharmacology and to advance the discipline by performing high quality research to understand the processes underlying drug actions. We contribute to the University’s interprofessional mission by providing the foundations of pharmacology and therapeutics for other health care professional programs. We strongly support collaborative research and are committed to preparing students for their careers as health professionals.

News

Dr. Joanna Dabrowska has been awarded a five-year, $2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to investigate the role of the hormone oxytocin in stress-induced psychiatric disorders. Her findings could lead to urgently needed new drug therapies for generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders.  She and co-investigator Dr. Amiel Rosenkranz will study "Modulation of the BNST activity by oxytocin -- role in stress, fear and anxiety." Because BNST, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a limbic structure in the forebrain, is key to the translation of stress into sustained anxiety, factors that regulate its activity have untapped potential as novel therapeutic targets.  Press Release

Newly published research from the laboratory of Dr. Amiel Rosenkranz has identified a brain circuit in the amygdala that is needed for social learning.  Changes in this circuit may underlie altered social behavior in autism.  Press Release