Members

Sheng-Xing Ma is a Professor and Director of Integrated Medicine Research Laboratories at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He was recruited to UCLA as an Assistant Professor in 1996, and he received a promotion to Associate Professor in 2003 and Professor in 2008 in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Ma has been engaged in the studies of nitrate pharmacology, biochemistry and physiological effects of nitric oxide (NO) for the past 20 years. He has demonstrated that nitroglycerin modifies neuronal excitability, increases norepinephrine release/synthesis in heart and brain, and stimulates noradrenergic activation in the posterior hypothalamus, which contributes to nitrate tolerance and central cardiovascular effects of the drug. Results from his group have found that NO mediates acupuncture-induced cardiovascular and analgesic effects through a novel pathway, the dorsal medullar-thalamic tract. Another novel discovery is that NO-cGMP related biomolecules contribute to biochemical physiological changes in acupoints associated with meridian practices and diseases. He has developed a painless, non-invasive device to biocapture NO, cGMP, and nitrotyrosine from skin surface of acupoints and meridians for studies of signal transduction molecules during physiological and pathological changes, and therapies such as acupuncture, moxibustion, and meditation/Qi Gon.

Dr. Juan Carlos Marvizón is Assistant Professor at the Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.Dr. Marvizón was born in 1957 in Rome, Italy. He majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). He received his Ph.D. in 1985 for his work on the glycine receptor at the Severo Ochoa Center of Molecular Biology in Madrid. During 1985, he worked as a research scientist at Pharmuka Laboratoires, a pharmaceutical company in Paris, France, investigating peripheral benzodiazepine receptors. He was then awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he studied the biochemistry of glycine and GABA receptors in relation to stress, and later became interested in NMDA receptors. From 1989 to 1991, he was faculty at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). Prior to coming to UCLA, he was Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, where he worked with Dr. Michel Baudry on the role of NMDA receptors in learning and memory. Dr. Marvizón came to UCLA in 1994. His current research focuses on the role of NMDA, substance P and opioid receptors in pain. He is the principal investigators of a grant from the NIH to study the release of substance P and opioids in the spinal cord.

Selected References:

Marvizon JCG, Grady EF, Stefani E, Bunnett NW, Mayer EA. Substance P release in the dorsal horn assessed by receptor internalization: NMDA receptors counteract a tonic inhibition by GABAB receptors. Eur. J. Neurosci. 11:417-426, 1999.

Marvizon JCG, Wang X, Matsuka Y, Neubert JK and Spigelman I. Relationship between capsaicin-evoked substance P release and NK1 receptor internalization in the rat dorsal horn. Neuroscience 118: 535-545, 2003.
Lao LJ., Song B and Marvizon JCG. Neurokinin release produced by capsaicin acting on the central terminals and axons of primary afferents: relationship with NMDA and GABAB receptors. Neuroscience 121: 667-680, 2003.

Song B and Marvizon JCG. Peptidases prevent m-opioid receptor internalization in dorsal horn neurons by endogenously released opioids. J. Neurosci. 23: 1847-1858, 2003.

Song B and Marvizón JCG. Dorsal horn neurons firing at high frequency, but not primary afferents, release opioid peptides that produce m-opioid receptor internalization in the rat spinal cord. J. Neurosci. 23: 9171-9184, 2003.

Dr. John C. Mazziotta assumed the position of Vice Chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences and Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA on March 1, 2015. Dr. Mazziotta has been a member of the UCLA faculty since 1983. Before his appointment as Vice Chancellor and Dean, he served as Associate Vice Chancellor for health sciences and Executive Vice Dean of the school of medicine. Dr. Mazziotta also has been chair Department of Neurology and director of the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, of which he was the founder.

Dr. Mazziotta earned his MD and PhD in neuroanatomy and computer science from Georgetown University. Following an internship at Georgetown, he completed neurology and nuclear medicine training at UCLA.

Dr. Mazziotta has published more than 260 research papers and eight texts. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Oldendorf Award from the American Society of Neuroimaging, the S. Weir Mitchell Award and the Wartenberg Prize of the American Academy of Neurology, and the Von Hevesy Prize from the International Society of Nuclear Medicine. Dr. Mazziotta also has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and he is a member of the Royal College of Physicians.

Dr. McRoberts’ research focuses on the mechanisms involved in visceral pain, particularly that associated with the GI tract. He uses in vitro biological approaches to examine neurons and neurotransmission at the cellular and molecular level. He also examines behavioral responses to various visceral pain paradigms with an emphasis on stress modulation of pain perception. The specific goal of Dr. McRoberts’ project is to determine the role of peripheral N-methyl-D-aspartate-type glutamate receptors (NMDARs) expressed on extrinsic primary afferent nerves in visceral and somatic pain transmission and in the development of peripheral and central sensitization.  Using various molecular techniques and whole cell patch clamp methodology, he has identified the NMDAR subunits expressed by different subtypes of dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, characterized the functional and pharmacological properties of these receptors, identified their role in modulating afferent sensitivity to mechanical distension of the colon, demonstrated that NMDARs in DRG neurons regulate voltage-dependent calcium channels through PKC activation, and shown that colonic inflammation leads to persistent up-regulation in NMDAR channels with altered pharmacological properties .  He has also developed mice with tissue specific knock out of NMDARs in DRG neurons and shown that these mice have diminished nociceptive responses during phase 2 of the formalin test, thus demonstrating that these receptors participate in the process of central sensitization. The long-term goal of this research is find better means to control pain of visceral origin in order to help patients with functional bowel diseases such as IBS.

My research is focused on the derangements of the autonomic nervous system, especially the sympathetic nervous system, in humans with heart failure. I am currently studying the abnormal reflex responses to exercise in heart failure patients, and how these contribute to the overall exercise limitation in heart failure. We are testing the hypothesis that exaggerated sympatho-excitatory responses to exercise in heart failure are mediated by muscle mechanoreceptor sensory nerves, which have been sensitized by ischemic metabolites. A secondary focus of my research is on the effects of acupuncture on the autonomic nervous system.