Dr. Stephen F. Traynelis has been selected by ASPET's Board of Publications Trustees Executive Committee to succeed Dr. P. Jeffrey Conn as the next Editor of Molecular Pharmacology. Dr. Traynelis will fully assume the editorship on January 1, 2012, but will start handling new manuscript submissions in December as part of the editorial transition.
Dr. Traynelis received the B.Sc. degree in chemistry from West Virginia University (summa cum laude) in 1984 and the Ph.D. degree in pharmacology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1988. His thesis was titled “Potassium-induced spontaneous electrographic seizures in the rat hippocampal slice,” and his advisor was Dr. Ray Dingledine.
From 1989 to 1991, Dr. Traynelis conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Stuart Cull-Candy in the Department of Pharmacology at University College London, London, UK. From 1992 to 1994, he did postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, with Prof. Stephen Heinemann, Director of the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory.
Since 1994, Dr. Traynelis has been on the faculty of Emory University's Department of Pharmacology in Atlanta, GA, holding the positions of Assistant Professor (1994–2000), Associate Professor (2000–2006), and Professor (since 2006).
His laboratory studies the basic mechanisms underlying excitatory synaptic transmission with a focus on the postsynaptic glutamate receptor. Ongoing experiments use electrophysiological approaches and molecular techniques to probe in detail the nature of glutamate receptor structure, regulation, and function. In addition, Dr. Traynelis's laboratory has been working for more than 10 years to develop new therapeutic strategies to regulate glutamate receptor function, which involves active collaboration with the Department of Chemistry to synthesize novel ligands that can be used to define the structure-function relationship for new regulatory sites. Dr. Traynelis also has active programs that explore non-neuronal G-protein-coupled receptor regulation of excitatory synaptic transmission and the CNS response to injury. Dr. Traynelis is a coinventor on seven issued or pending patents and a cofounder of NeurOp, Inc., an Atlanta-based CNS drug discovery company.
Actively involved on grant review boards, Dr. Traynelis has served the NIH on numerous grant programs and study sections, the Singapore Biomedical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council, the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and others.
He currently serves on the editorial boards of Open Pharmacology Journal and Molecular Brain. He served on the Molecular Pharmacology editorial board for several years before being named an Associate Editor in 2008. He has served as a reviewer for more than 30 other journals.
Dr. Traynelis has been an ASPET member since 1997. He is also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Biophysical Society, and the Society for Neuroscience.
Prospective Molecular Pharmacology authors should note that the manuscript submission process will not change with the change in editors. All submissions will continue to be handled through the journal's online manuscript system (submit-molpharm.aspetjournals.org).
Molecular Pharmacology began publication in 1965 under Dr. Avram Goldstein. Dr. Traynelis will be the journal's thirteenth editor following Paul Talalay, Steven E. Mayer, George I. Drummond, Norman Kirshner, Joel G. Hardman, William A. Catterall, T. Kendall Harden, Raymond Dingledine, Joan Heller Brown, Paul Insel, and P. Jeffrey Conn.
- Copyright © 2011 The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics