Dr. Richard Mailman received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and Food Science from Rutgers University and the Ph.D. in Physiology/Toxicology from North Carolina State University in 1974. After post-doctoral training at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina , Dr. Mailman joined the faculty at UNC, where he is currently Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Medicinal Chemistry.
As an American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Fellow, Dr. Mailman serves on the Liaison Committee with Government Agencies and the Pharmaceutical Industry. He has served terms on NIH and NIMH study sections and on the EPA Neurotoxicology Science Advisory Board. In addition, he has been a consultant for numerous NIH, NSF, USDA, and VA ad hoc committees and several industry organizations. He was on the 1993 NIMH Neuroscience of Mental Health Advisory Panel to assist with long-term planning. Currently, he is a member of the NIH Reviewer Reserve. He serves on numerous editorial boards including Synapse, Brain Research Bulletin, Psychopharmacology Bulletin, and The Journal of Molecular Neurobiology, and has served as a peer reviewer for more than three dozen journals in the last decade. His research has received continuous NIH funding for more than 15 years, and he has authored more than 170 full-length manuscripts, one book, and several patent applications. Among other honors, he was named the 1987 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Scholar in Toxicology for his work on sequelae to injury of dopamine systems.
Dr. Mailman's lab explores the atomic and molecular mechanisms involved in how dopamine receptors recognize drugs, and how this results in functional activation. One important focus is on the mechanisms by which drugs acts as agonists, antagonists, or in some combination. The lab has hypothesized that the allosteric changes caused by the same drug binding to a single receptor isoform can result in different functional effects when the receptor is in different cellular milieus; in other words, functional effects are dependent on the available transduction systems. The variety of approaches employed to study the "functional selectivity hypothesis" includes computerized molecular modeling of dopamine receptors, characterization of new drugs resulting from these efforts, functional studies of new drugs (both in clonal lines and in brain tissue), and studies of how these drugs affect brain function in the intact animal, for example behavioral changes and neurochemical changes in the freely moving, awake animal. The lab uses a spectrum of methods including clonal cell lines transfected with specific dopamine receptor isoforms, radioreceptor assays, quantitative receptor autoradiography, in situ hybridization histochemistry, cerebral microdialysis, various HPLC neurochemical methods, various biochemical functional assays (effects on second messenger systems or estimates of neurotransmitter turnover.
Dr. Mailman's collaboration with Dr. Nichols has resulted in several recent major advances. Most notably, the two developed the first bioavailable high potency full agonist for the DI receptor, dihydrexidine, a compound derived from their model of the D1 receptor "pharmacophore." Dihydrexidine permitted testing of, and strong evidence for, their hypothesis that the key target in pharmacotherapy of Parkinson's disease was the DI receptor, not the generally accepted D2 receptor.
Articles coauthored
by Dr. Mailman and Dr. Nichols
Back to the
Team Dopamine Researchers' Page