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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Regulating Neuronal Growth With Structurally Defined Glycans, Gabriella D. Hartman
Regulating Neuronal Growth With Structurally Defined Glycans, Gabriella D. Hartman
Honors Theses
Chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs) and keratan sulfate proteoglycans (KSPGs) play an important role in neural development. Aggrecan, a CSPG, operates in the neural extracellular matrix where it negatively regulates neurite outgrowth to prevent aberrant process formation. Unfortunately, this aggrecan or CSPG-rich/KSPG-rich barrier can also prevent neuronal regeneration, which contributes to the inability to repair brain and spinal cord injuries. Removal of CSPGs and KSPGs has been shown to increase neurite outgrowth. We extend these findings by testing the ability of structurally-defined glycans to outcompete aggrecan and allow neurite outgrowth. Our overall goal is to determine if there is a particular …
Studies Of Salvinorin-Based Antagonists To Elucidate Pertinent Interactions For Kappa Opioid Receptor Antagonism, Madeline Keane
Studies Of Salvinorin-Based Antagonists To Elucidate Pertinent Interactions For Kappa Opioid Receptor Antagonism, Madeline Keane
Honors Theses
Opioid abuse, leading to addiction and related deaths, has created a chronic epidemic in the United States for the past 30 years. This crisis has sprung from reliance on the prescription of opioid analgesics as the primary method for the management of pain in the 1990s. At that time, these drugs, specifically Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin, were marketed as non-addictive. Due to this systemic minimization of the addictive properties of opioid analgesics, as prescription rates increased, opioid-related mortality rates climbed. This epidemic continues to be pervasive, as opioid-related overdose resulted in 47,600 deaths in 2017. In addition to the opioid epidemic, …
In-Vitro Assessment Of Cb1/Cb2 Receptor Binding And Function, Joey M. Davis
In-Vitro Assessment Of Cb1/Cb2 Receptor Binding And Function, Joey M. Davis
Honors Theses
Cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 are G protein-coupled receptors that have a variety of physiological effects on the human body. Many natural product agonists and antagonists are presumed to interact with the cannabinoid receptors and are therefore heavily studied in drug discovery. Assays are used to study the binding of compounds to these receptors. However, a limited number of these assays are efficient in determining the functional activity of ligands associated with CB1 and CB2. Of those, many use radioactivity which is both expensive and potentially dangerous to the researcher. In this study, we first validated the assays already found …