Position Title
Professor and Associate Director, Center for Neuroscience
- Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology -- School of Medicine
The majority of drugs used in human medicine target G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). The focus in the Whistler laboratory is elucidating how altering the signaling “bias” of a GPCR for its various downstream signaling partners contributes to drug responsiveness and side effects. Dr. Whistler is particularly interested in the role of biased versus balanced GPCR signaling in modulating responsiveness to drugs of abuse and the co-morbidities of anxiety, depression and altered decision making that accompany drug use/abuse. The laboratory has demonstrated the in vivo relevance of altered signaling bias in addiction disorders, and has extended these studies to other clinically important GPCR targets and their ligands/drugs that are important for the treatment of psychosis, depression, Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, asthma and metabolic disease.