I am professor and chairman of 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.
Original Research
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...
Role of Neurosteroids in the Anticonvulsant Activity of Midazolam (with Ashish Dhir), British Journal of Pharmacology (2011)
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Midazolam is a short-acting benzodiazepine that is widely used as an intravenous...
Seizure Protection by Intrapulmonary Delivery of Propofol Hemisuccinate (with Ashish Dhir, Dorota Zolkowska, and Randall B. Murphy), Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (2011)
The lung provides a portal of entry for drug delivery that could be used to...
Anticonvulsant and Proconvulsant Actions of 2-Deoxy-D-glucose (with Maciej Gasior, Jessica Yankura, Adam L. Hartman, and Amy French), Epilepsia (2010)
Purpose: 2-Deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), a glucose analog that accumulates in cells and interferes with carbohydrate metabolism...
Ganaxolone suppression of behavioral and electrographic seizures in the mouse amygdala kindling model (with Doodipala S. Reddy), Epilepsy Research (2010)
Ganaxolone (3alpha-hydroxy-3alpha-methyl-5alpha-pregnan-20-one), a synthetic analog of the endogenous neurosteroid allopregnanolone and a positive allosteric modulator...
Reviews
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...
Treatment of Infantile Spasms: Emerging Insights From Clinical and Basic Science Perspectives (with Carl E. Stafstrom, Barry G.W. Arnason, Tallie Z. Baram, Anna Catania, Miguel A. Cortez, Tracy A. Glauser, Michael R. Pranzatelli, Raili Riikonen, Shlomo Shinnar, and John W. Swann), Journal of Child Neurology (2011)
Infantile spasms is an epileptic encephalopathy of early infancy with specific clinical and electroencephalographic (EEG)...
Convection-Enhanced Delivery in the Treatment of Epilepsy, Neurotherapeutics (2009)
Convection-enhanced delivery (CED) is a novel drug-delivery technique that uses positive hydrostatic pressure to deliver...
Neurosteroid Replacement Therapy for Catamenial Epilepsy (with Doodipala S. Reddy), Neurotherapeutics (2009)
Perimenstural catamenial epilepsy, the cyclical occurrence of seizure exacerbations near the time of menstruation, affects...
Intrinsic Severity as a Determinant of Antiepileptic Drug Refractoriness (with Michael R. Johnson), Epilepsy Currents (2008)
For the most part, resistance to medications in epilepsy is independent of the choice of...
Commentaries and Editorials
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 (with Roger J. Porter, Ashish Dhir, and Robert L. Macdonald), Handbook of Clinical Neurology, 3rd Series (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,...