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Brian Dickens, DO received his BS degree in Biology from Marshall University in Huntington, WV, then attended the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg, WV, graduating in 2005. He completed an Osteopathic Internship at Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, NY in 2006 and Family Medicine Residency at the Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, VA in 2008. From 2008 to 2009, he worked as a family practice physician at Group Health Permanente in Olympia, WA, returning to Roanoke, VA in 2009 for the same position with the Carilion Clinic until March 2014 when he joined the staff at VCOM.
Dr. Dickens has published two books, "Your Health, an Owner's Manual" in 2011 and "Habits for a Healthy Life" in 2013, and is a Certified Personal Trainer with the American Council on Exercise. He's participated in several international medical missionary trips and his clinical interests include international medicine, pediatric and adolescent medicine, medical genetics, and osteopathic manipulative medicine.
After receiving a Pharmacy degree Blaise Costa pursued a theoretical biophysics research to study the structure, function and pharmacology of NMDA receptors that play a crucial role in learning and memory. For this work, he earned a PhD Degree in Psychopharmacology from The National Institute of Mental Health And Neurosciences, Bangalore India. To work out the theoretical findings, he undertook a molecular neuroscience training at the University of London. He won the Royal Society International award to fund this training. Subsequently, as a postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, he further studied NMDA receptor function using electrophysiology techniques. To translate this knowledge into identification of novel therapeutic agents for brain disorders, he moved to the University of Nebraska Medical Center to work on a NIH funded project, for which he served as key personnel. During this work, his team discovered a novel family of negative and positive allosteric NMDA receptor modulators. These compounds are novel in their chemical structure, mechanism of action and binding sites. Currently, Costa lab is interested in identifying and developing NMDA receptor based therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative disorders with a special focus on Alzheimer’s disease.
Visit my lab website for more information
| Year | University | Degree |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | University of Nebraska Medical Center | Postdoc |
| 2007 | Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany | Postdoc |
| 2006 | School of Pharmacy, University of London, UK | International Research Fellow |
| 2005 | National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, India | PhD - Psychopharmacology |
| 2001 | MGR Medical University, Chennai, India | MS - Pharmacology |
| 1999 | MGR Medical University, Chennai, India | BPharm |
Mental disorders affect everyone in four human beings. Abnormalities in glutamate mediated communication between brain cells cause most of the neuropsychiatric disorders. We are working to identify, design and screen novel compounds with the goal of developing new treatment strategies for refractory brain disorders.
