Research Axis
Brain and Child Development Axis
Research Theme
Development of psychopathologies
Address
CHUSJ - Centre de Recherche
Office 3.17.026
Phone
514 345-4931 6289
Research in my laboratory focuses on the molecular determinants of the efficacy of drugs that act on G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), particularly cannabinoids and opiates.
Chronic pain afflicts millions of people worldwide causing more disability than cardiovascular disease and cancer combined. Treatment of this condition is especially difficult since effective analgesics are sorely lacking.
Research in my laboratory focuses on rational drug design to develop novel analgesics for chronic pain treatment. Over the last 20 years, we have studied mechanisms underlying the analgesic actions and the undesired effects of opioids and more recently, cannabinoids. For this purpose, the lab has developed bioanalytical tools for screening novel drug candidates.
By applying these technological and analytical tools to opioid analgesics, we have developed and validated a strategy to infer possible clinical outcomes from in vitro signaling profiles of novel analgesics. We have extended these approaches and strategies to characterize the pharmacological properties of cannabinoid ligands.