This award will provide supplementary support to enable Dr. David Saffen of the Johns Hopkins University to conduct collaborative research with Dr. Tatsuya Haga for one year at the Institute of Brain Research, University of Tokyo Medical School, Japan. They will use pharmacologic methods to characterize the induction of particular genes following activation of specific receptors in neurological tissue. It is known that synoptic or pharmacologic activation of neurotrans- mitter receptors in the cell membrane can result in a rapid genomic response in neurons of the central nervous system. Dr. Saffen's research aims at increasing our understanding of this process by stimulating such responses first in neuroblastoma cells, then attempting to duplicate the response in hippocampal slices and the adult rat brain. The collaborating Japanese laboratory was a pioneer in the investigation of nerve cell receptors, and this collaborative effort may be expected to yield important results in the understanding of neuron function.
