Description:

The Department of Pharmacology welcomes Karen S. Wilcox, Ph.D., Professor and Chair in the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, Laboratory of Glial/Neuronal Interactions in Epilepsy at the University of Utah.

For over 40 years, the University of Utah has partnered with the NINDS, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and medicinal chemists to evaluate novel compounds for the potential as anti-seizure drugs (ASDs). This Epilepsy Therapy Screening Program (ETSP) has contributed to the preclinical evaluation of numerous ASDs that are now clinically available for patients to help control their seizures. While newer ASDs are often well tolerated by patients, it is estimated that nearly 30% of patients with epilepsy do not have their seizures adequately controlled with existing ASDs. Thus there is a clinical need to continue to develop new medications that are well tolerated and can address this patient population. In this talk, I will describe the approach that the University of Utah contract site of the ETSP has recently adopted to facilitate the identification and differentiation of novel compounds to address this refractory patient population. I will describe how to participate in the program, how the assays that are performed at the contract site of the ETSP perform with respect to existing ASDs, and present new data on novel models of seizures and epilepsy that are under consideration for inclusion in the ETSP. This unique approach, a public, private, and academic partnership, has benefitted the patient with epilepsy and their families and could be a model approach for therapy development for other neurological disorders.