PD Models Lab

Linking drug action to biological response through advanced preclinical models

Overview

The PD Models Lab brings together expertise in behavioral pharmacology, systems neuroscience, renal pathophysiology and quantitative modeling to examine drug action, disease mechanisms and biological response across complex systems. The team develops and applies translational models of substance use disorders, pain, neuropathy, inflammatory conditions, hypertension, kidney injury and chronic kidney disease, integrating behavioral and physiological assays with molecular, cellular, imaging and computational techniques.

Research capabilities include drug self-administration and choice procedures, pain-depressed behavior assays, abuse-liability assessment, genetically modified animal models, immune cell profiling, transcriptomic and proteomic analyses, calcium and voltage imaging, fiber photometry and empirical, dynamic and AI-assisted modeling. The team also investigates renal mechanisms of hypertension, mechanisms of chemotoxicity-induced kidney damage and molecular pathways that drive the progression of chronic kidney diseases.

Together, these approaches help investigators characterize drug effects from molecular and cellular signaling through organ-system function and complex behavior, evaluate candidate therapeutics, investigate mechanisms of toxicity and disease progression and improve the translation of preclinical findings into clinical outcomes.

Members

• Matthew L. Banks, Ph.D.
• M. Imad Damaj, Ph.D.
• Ningjun Li, M.D.
• S. Stevens Negus, Ph.D.
• Liya Qiao, Ph.D.