I am professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. I am also a member of the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and the Pharmacology and Toxicology Graduate Group. I received a B.A. (biophysics) from Amherst College, and M.D. and Ph.D. (pharmacology) degrees from Yale University. I was a resident, fellow and assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For over 20 years, I was a senior investigator and chief of the Epilepsy Research Section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. My research interests involve ion channel pharmacology and neurological therapeutics, including antiepileptic drugs and other epilepsy treatment approaches. I currently serve as president of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics.
Original Research
Adjunctive perampanel for refractory partial-onset seizures. Randomized phase III study 304 (with Jacqueline A. French, Gregory L. Krauss, Victor Biton, David Squillacote, Haichen Yang, Antonio Laurenza, and Dinesh Kumar), Neurology (2012)
Objective: To assess efficacy and safety of once-daily 8 or 12 mg perampanel, a noncompetitive...
Characterization of Seizures Induced by Acute and Repeated Exposure to Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine (with Dorota Zolkowska, Christopher N. Banks, Ashish Dhir, Bora Inceoglu, James R. Sanborn, Mark R. McCoy, Donald A. Bruun, Bruce D. Hammock, and Pamela J. Lein), Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (2012)
Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine (tetramine; TETS) is a potent convulsant poison that is considered to be a chemical...
Role of Neurosteroids in the Anticonvulsant Activity of Midazolam (with Ashish Dhir), British Journal of Pharmacology (2012)
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Midazolam is a short-acting benzodiazepine that is widely used as an intravenous...
Propofol Hemisuccinate Suppresses Cortical Spreading Depression (with Ashish Dhir and Christoph Lossin), Neuroscience Letters (2012)
Propofol is a rapidly acting water-insoluble non-barbiturate anesthetic agent that is widely used as an...
11Beta-Hydroxylase Inhibitors Protect Against Seizures in Mice by Increasing Endogenous Neurosteroid Synthesis (with Rafal M. Kaminski), Neuropharmacology (2011)
Steroid 11β-hydroxylase (CYP11B1; EC 1.14.15.4) is a mitochondrial enzyme located in the zona fasciculata of...
Reviews
AMPA receptors as a molecular target in epilepsy therapy, Acta Neurol Scand (2013)
Epileptic seizures occur as a result of episodic abnormal synchronous discharges in cerebral neuronal networks....
Glia and epilepsy: excitability and inflammation (with Orrin Devinsky, Annamaria Vezzani, Souhel Najjar, and Nihal C. De Lanerolle), Trends in Neurosciences (2013)
Epilepsy is characterized by recurrent spontaneous seizures due to hyperexcitability and hypersynchrony of brain neurons....
Preclinical pharmacology of perampanel, a selective non-competitive AMPA receptor antagonist (with Takahisa Hanada), Acta Neurol Scand (2013)
Perampanel [2-(2-oxo-1-phenyl-5-pyridin-2-yl-1,2-dihydropyridin-3-yl) benzonitrile; E2007] is a potent, selective, orally active non-competitive AMPA receptor antagonist developed...
How Theories Evolved Concerning the Mechanism of Action of Barbiturates, Epilepsia (2012)
The barbiturate phenobarbital has been in use in the treatment of epilepsy for 100 years....
Revisiting AMPA Receptors as an Antiepileptic Drug Target, Epilepsy Currents (2011)
In the 1990s there was intense interest in ionotropic glutamate receptors as therapeutic targets for...
Commentaries and Editorials
The Intrinsic Severity Hypothesis of Pharmacoresistance to Antiepileptic Drugs, Epilepsia (2013)
Pharmacoresistance to antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) is a barrier to seizure freedom for many persons with...
Disclosure of Clinical Trial Results When Product Development Is Abandoned (with Howard J. Federoff), Sci Transl Med (2011)
Currently, sponsors are not required to report the outcomes of clinical research on drugs or...
Nontraditional Epilepsy Treatment Approaches (with Gregory L. Holmes), Neurotherapeutics (2009)
Overview of articles published in a special issue of Neurotherapeutics (April 2009) on nontraditional (non-drug)...
Brivaracetam: a rational drug discovery success story, Brit J Pharmacol (2008)
Levetiracetam, the alpha-ethyl analogue of the nootropic piracetam, is a widely used antiepileptic drug (AED)...
Book Chapters
Mechanisms of Action of Antiseizure Drugs (Chapter 39) (with Roger J. Porter, Ashish Dhir, and Robert L. Macdonald), Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Epilepsy, Part II (2012)
Migraine and Epilepsy—Shared Mechanisms within the Family of Episodic Disorders, Jasper’s Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies, 4th Edition (2012)
Migraine and epilepsy are episodic disorders that share many clinical features and underlying pathophysiological mechanisms....
Neurosteroids—Endogenous Regulators of Seizure Susceptibility and Role in the Treatment of Epilepsy (with Doodipala S. Reddy), Jasper’s Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies, 4th Edition (2012)
Certain steroid hormone metabolites that have activity as modulators of GABA-A receptors but lack conventional...
What Clinical Observations on the Epidemiology of Antiepileptic Drug Intractability Tell Us About the Mechanisms of Pharmacoresistance, Puzzling Cases of Epilepsy. Second Edition (2008)
In the past several years, there have been important advances in the clinical epidemiology of...
Antiepileptic Drugs and Migraine, Innovative Drug Development for Headache Disorders (2008)
Prepared for the 16th International Headache Research Seminar, “Innovative Drug Development For Headache Disorders,” March...
Book Reviews
The Art and Politics of Science (book review), Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (2009)
In this autobiography and collection of essays, we learn how Harold Varmus created a life...
Of Blind Men and Brain Steroids, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences (2000)
Review of "Neurosteroids: A New Regulatory Function in the Nervous System" (edited by Etiene-Emile Baulieu,...