UTMB Expertise In Addiction

Research Services Announces Researcher of the Month for October



Jose A. Moron-Concepcion, PhD
Assistant Professor,
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Scientist, Center for Addiction Research
Website: https://www.utmb.edu/addiction/jose_moronconcepcion.htm

Jose Moron-Concepcion came to UTMB in December 2006 with joint appointments in the Center for Addiction Research and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He has a strong scientific background and expertise in drug addiction, having received his PhD in Biochemistry at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain in 1998, and carried out postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Baltimore from 1999 to 2000. He spent 2001 to 2002 as a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio before returning to Barcelona to head the Neurology R&D Programme at Proteomika S.L. He was an Instructor in the Department of Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, from 2003 to 2006, prior to coming to UTMB. Not one to rest on his laurels, since arriving at UTMB, his R03 grant application, “PSD protein expression in extinction of morphine-dependent conditioned behavior,” was funded, and he has submitted a second NIH proposal, and is currently working on a third.  Read more

study on cognitive development By DR. karen e. smith

Karen E. Smith, Ph.D., professor in the Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics and member of the Center for Addiction Research was quoted in USA Weekend (March 9-11, 2007) in the “Annual Report on Baby Steps.”  She is the lead author of a study with Susan Landry, Ph.D. and Paul R. Swank, Ph.D. (Children’s Learning Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston) published in Pediatrics in May, 2006, which showed that very low birth weight babies show stronger cognitive development when their mothers were highly responsive to their needs across early childhood. This was true even when controlling for maternal responsiveness during school ages. Smith suggests that parents respond promptly and in a warm and sensitive manner when their baby offers cues not only when crying but when showing interest in objects and activities. Smith is currently extrapolating knowledge from premature infants and infants born to drug-abusing mothers to help accelerate cognitive development.

 

ASPET-Astellas Awards in Translational Pharmacology

Kathryn A. Cunningham, Ph.D., Chauncey Leake Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and director of UTMB's Center for Addiction Research, has been selected as one of three ASPET-Astellas award recipients. The ASPET-Astellas Awards in Translational Pharmacology recognize pharmacological research accomplishments that seek to extend fundamental research closer to applications directed towards improving human health, and that may offer significant advances in clinical medicine in the future. Cunningham will receive the award at the Experimental Biology ’07 meeting in late April, in Washington D.C.