The John J. Abel Award recognizes fundamental research in pharmacology and experimental therapeutics by young investigators.

This year, the ASPET Awards Committee selected Erica Levitt, PhD, Pharm.D., to give the lecture.

The Levitt lab is interested in understanding how opioids and disease affect the brainstem circuitry that controls breathing using a variety of cellular and systems level approaches, including brain slice electrophysiology, circuit tracing, optogenetics, single unit and whole nerve recordings from a unique preparation with an intact respiratory network and in vivo-like respiratory cycle, and breathing measurements in awake animals.

Drugging Time: Nuclear Receptors and the Pharmacological Control of Circadian Physiology

The Goodman and Gilman Award recognize outstanding, original research contributions to the pharmacology of biological receptors.

This year, the ASPET Awards Committee selected Thomas Burris, PhD, to give the lecture.

This lecture will present the pharmacological targeting of the ROR and REV-ERB nuclear receptors as a paradigm for controlling circadian physiology. Our work establishes that circadian rhythms are not merely descriptive features of biology but represent a fundamental and druggable layer of physiological regulation linking metabolism, behavior, and disease. I will describe the molecular mechanisms by which RORs and REV-ERBs integrate metabolic state with the core clock, including our identification of endogenous ligands for these previously orphan receptors, and how synthetic ligands enable pharmacological modulation of these pathways in vivo. These studies reveal opportunities to target circadian biology in cardiometabolic and inflammatory diseases, neurodegeneration, and human performance. Finally, I will highlight how this framework extends across nuclear receptor biology, illustrating a broader strategy for pharmacological control of complex physiological systems.