Biography
Dr. Lai is a Senior Research Scientist in the Gill Institute for Neuroscience at Indiana University Bloomington. She earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Neurochemistry from Yale School of Medicine. The central goal of her research is to identify disruptors of specific protein-protein interactions as novel drug discovery targets. Disruption of protein-protein interactions by small molecules was once considered to be an impossible goal for drug development. Her team at ICOS discovered the first small molecule inhibitor of the nNOS-PSD95 protein-protein interaction and demonstrated that it decreases NMDA-induced hyperalgesia and mechanical allodynia. Since the nNOS-PSD95 signaling complex mediates many aspects of signaling of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, disruption of the nNOS-PSD95 complex is expected to be beneficial for treating neuronal disorders involving aberrant glutamate receptor signaling. In collaboration with Dr. Andrea Hohmann, they have shown that their novel nNOS-PSD95 inhibitors have efficacy in multiple pain models. Their collaboration with Dr. Anantha Shekhar at IUSM has shown that disruption of the nNOS-PSD95 interaction decreases fear conditioning in a preclinical model of posttraumatic stress disorder. The primary approaches they use are molecular biology, biochemistry, cell culture and preclinical models to examine the roles that different protein-protein interaction complexes played in excitatory neurotransmitter signaling.
