Excited to share that we just got a notice of award for our first lab R01. Excited to start work on this project. In the words of my 10-year old son - YESSIR.
@baucumlab.bsky.social
In Minneapolis for #Aspet2026 and met up with Brady Atwood for a tour at #PaisleyPark, Prince’s studio and museum. It was really great and fun to hang out with Brady.
New article from the lab on what animal models of prenatal opioid exposure have taught us about the consequences of opioid use during pregnancy.
IUPHAR REVIEW: The Neurobiological Outcomes of Prenatal Opioid Exposure: Evidence from Preclinical Models
Prenatal opioid exposure is a major public health concern as opioid use during pregnancy has increased drastically over recent decades. This exposure …
sciencedirect.com
Delighted to share our discoveries about one of the brain's neurotransmitter systems: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Together with colleagues at the @alleninstitute.org, we have learned a lot about a tiny cluster of neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) that releases norepinephrine (NE). 1
biorxiv.org
Excited to share publication news for the lab. Our latest work describing a novel conditional neurabin knockout mouse line is available ASAP in ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Open Access version can be found here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/....
Proteomic Characterization of Striatal Neurabin Interactome and Its Sex Specific Impact on Motor Behavior
The striatum serves as the primary input nucleus of the basal ganglia. Reversible protein phosphorylation in the post synaptic density (PSD) of medium spiny neurons (MSNs) modulates inputs from striatal afferents. The context dependent regulation of PSD protein phosphorylation in direct-pathway medium spiny neurons (dMSNs) and indirect-pathway medium spiny neurons (iMSNs) works to differentially and synergistically impact striatal physiology and the execution of motor programs. An important regulator of PSD protein phosphorylation is protein phosphatase 1 (PP1), which obtains substrate specificity through the action of PP1 targeting proteins. While prior work has demonstrated the global and cell type-specific impact of the PP1 targeting protein, spinophilin, on striatal motor behaviors like the accelerating rotarod task and amphetamine sensitization, the role of its homologue, neurabin, is yet to be elucidated. Using proteomics approaches, we determined that striatal neurabin associates with pre and postsynaptic proteins that mediate glutamatergic synapse function. Moreover, we found that global loss of neurabin enhanced rotarod motor learning but had no impact on amphetamine sensitization. Interestingly, using novel conditional neurabin knockout mouse lines, we found that loss of neurabin in dMSNs, but not iMSNs, enhanced performance on the accelerating rotarod task and that these effects were specific for male mice. These data highlight neurabin’s particular importance to the striatal glutamatergic synapse and uncover a sex and cell type specific role for this synaptic protein in uniquely limiting skill motor learning but not psychomotor sensitization.
pubs.acs.org
for those in my boat, the designation has changed on my grant from yesterday to this new pergatory
Grant reviewed on Wednesday updated from Not Discussed to "Competitive-not discussed". I think in top half, but not top ~30%. A0 submission, so that is something. Hope that comments are addressable when I get summary statement. Looks like others like @nanopharmnc.bsky.social are in a similar boat
The 4th of my 4 grants this review round got a not discussed today. Glad I got at least 1 that got a 28th percentile, and will see how that goes, but I thought that at least one of my others would also have been discussed.
Had 2 grants reviewed this week. One ND and one 28th percentile. At least one was discussed and it was at NIGMS With the new system and given that NIGMS didn’t exclusively use percentiles previously anyway, will see if it has any chance. One more grant getting reviewed this week.
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Two grants getting reviewed this week and one next week. I have had to wait almost a year for some of these to get reviewed as they were submitted as part of an at risk mechanism, which was removed when they were sent. I hope to get a good score, or at least discussed, but who knows.
Excited to share our work on spinophilin and the dopamine D2 receptor is in press at the Journal for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Great work by Basant Hens and @fireinlab.bsky.social and Whitney Smith-Kinneman in the proteomics core. Support from #SNRI and #BMBP at #IUSM
Just saw my grant in commons that was supposed to be reviewed a month ago was rescheduled to December. Hopefully it is in the top 30% or whatever that gets Discussed. It is listed as a 2 day study section but I thought some study sections are going down to 1 day which is why they change triage line?
After 10 years, I am stepping down as chair of our department and we have an active search going on! Utah is a phenomenal place to live and work and it's been the honor of a lifetime chairing the department founded by Lou Goodman. #MedSky #Neuroskyence Repost! jobs.chronicle.com/job/37914733...
Chair of Pharmacology and Toxicology - Salt Lake City, Utah job with The University of Utah | 37914733
The University of Utah seeks a Chair of Pharmacology and Toxicology
jobs.chronicle.com
Striatal spinophilin enhances D2R interaction with cytosolic proteins to mediate persistent D2R agonist-induced locomotor suppression. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.09.675136v1
I got another ND on my NIH grant. While it’s hard to be too frustrated with the current state of things, this one was super frustrating as scored last time and thought the idea was much stronger and addressed the critiques well from the last round.
3 of 4 R01s in limbo as pulled from study section and the one that was actually reviewed was not discussed. Sigh.
This happened to 3 of my 5 grants: assigned, de-assigned, study section canceled, study section rescheduled, grants de-assigned. One should get reviewed and I bet other will be de-assigned again. No chaos here.
Pastrami turned out pretty good. Still wondering, keep doing science or open a bbq joint. Call it “Broken Beaker BBQ”
DOGE is cutting funding for a badly-needed new VA medical center in Indianapolis. Denying healthcare to our veterans isn’t efficiency. It’s cruel. I’ve demanded that DOGE immediately reverse this dangerous decision.
Well the study section that was supposed to meet yesterday and today for one of my grants got an updated date of 04/22 on commons. I still don’t see it or any new ones in the federal register but not sure how long those take to post.
The 2nd of 5 study sections that I have grants being reviewed at got dreaded * - “Denotes this meeting did not take place as scheduled” by it. Federal register is supposedly opened up, but still the last study section posted was on 1/21, so will be 15-35 days at least for rescheduling, I bet.
OK #HoosierSky so this is happening Share amongst your peeps Those who are in science Those who like science Those who have been helped by science Those who value truth and facts Come hang with the cool kids and say hi to some rad scientists
Gene editing technology began by people studying salt marshes. Ozempic began by folks studying the venom of Gila Monsters. Support for basic science has empowered us to understand our world. Tethering it to applications health has transformed and saved countless lives.
1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
NOT-OD-25-068: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates NOT-OD-25-068. OD
grants.nih.gov
The following post is my opinion and not a reflection of anyone else. I saw that 2 of my grants that were submitted in response to an “At Risk” mechanism were de-assigned from the study sections they were supposed to be reviewed at. They are currently not assigned to any study section. 1/6
My funding has allowed us to make tools to understand how one specific protein impacts behavioral changes associated with repetitive movements observed in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Roxana Daneshjou, MD, PhD@roxanadaneshjou.bsky.social · 2y agoTo help people understand the importance of NIH, share what you’ve used their funding for (in easily understandable terms). I’ll start: my NIH postdoc funding helped me develop and test AI tools that could identify skin cancer across diverse skin tones.
Super excited to share our newest preprint using proximity labeling and #proteomics and striatal biochemistry to identify new spinophilin interacting proteins and describe a potential role for spinophilin in the regulation of PSD protein expression. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Proximity labeling and orthogonal nanobody pulldown (ID-oPD) approaches to map the spinophilin interactome uncover a putative role for spinophilin in protein homeostasis.
Spinophilin is a dendritic spine enriched scaffolding and protein phosphatase 1 targeting protein. To detail spinophilin interacting proteins, we created an Ultra-ID and ALFA-tagged spinophilin encodi...
biorxiv.org