| De-Maw Chuang, Ph.D.
Dr. De-Maw Chuang is the Chief of the Section on Molecular Neurobiology in the Mood and Anxiety Disorder Program of the National Institute of Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program of the State University at Stony Brook and received his postdoctoral training in the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology at Nutley, New Jersey. Since 1999, he has been holding the current position of a Section Chief. He has worked throughout his career as a neuroscientist, pharmacologist and molecular biologist. Dr. Chuang’s current research centers on the neurobiology of mood stabilizing drugs, notably lithium, valproic acid and lamotrigine, which are used to treat bipolar mood disorder. His pioneering work demonstrated that treatment with lithium robustly protects cultured CNS neurons from glutamate-induced NMDA-receptor-mediated excitotoxicity, which has been implicated in a variety of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases. His recent research provided evidence that lithium and valproic acid, by inhibiting glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) and histone deacetylases (HDACs), respectively, elicited neuroprotective, neurotrophic, anti-inflammatory and mood stabilizing effects. His laboratory also reported the downstream mechanisms mediating these actions. His past and current work showed that lithium and valproic acid have beneficial effects in multiple animal models of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. His research goal is to explore the possibility that mood stabilizers have utility in treating neurodegenerative diseases, in addition to bipolar disorder. Dr. Chuang has received many honors and awards, including the NIH Director’s Award in 1997 in recognition of "his superb leadership and innovative research which advances the understanding of basic mechanisms involved in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders". He is the recipient of the 2002 NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award. He was also inducted to the Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 2006. Dr. Chuang is an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, and a member of many scientific societies including the ACNP, FASEB and the Society for Neuroscience. He has published over 220 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals including PNAS, Science, Nature Medicine, J Neuroscience, Mol Psychiatry and J Biol Chem. |
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