Pharmacological Advances in Central Nervous System Stimulants

Margaret E. Gnegy is a Professor Emerita (active) in the Department of Pharmacology at The University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1975 from West Virginia University. She conducted her post-doctoral studies in the Laboratory of Preclinical Pharmacology at the National Institutes of Mental Health under the tutelage of Dr. Erminio Costa. Her research interests focused on signal transduction mechanisms, particularly protein kinase C, that regulate the action of amphetamine at the dopamine transporter and how they affect reinforcement. In the past few years, her laboratory designed and tested CNS-permeant drugs (PKCβ inhibitors) for inhibition of amphetamine-stimulated dopamine release and amphetamine-stimulated behaviors that assess motivation for drug seeking and taking. For three years Dr. Gnegy served as the Director of the UM Substance Abuse Research Center and for 8 years was the Principle Investigator on the T32 Substance Abuse Interdisciplinary Training Program funded by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse. She also serves as Chair of the Pharmacology Graduate Program for over 20 years. Nineteen pre-doctoral students and 12 post-doctoral fellows have been trained in her laboratory and she has served as mentor to young UM faculty within and outside of the Pharmacology Department. In recognition of her exemplary performance in mentoring and training, the UM conferred upon Dr. Gnegy the Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award for 2009. She has served as President of both the American Association for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) and the Catecholamine Society. Dr. Gnegy also served as an Associate Editor of the journal Pharmacology & Therapeutics. In 2019 she was named an AAAS Fellow.