This presentation will endeavor to highlight contributions during each of the decades where Gav has sustained a steady and tantalizing stream of publications and scientific contributions. It will conclude with an overall summary and appreciation for his research and his personal commitment to the discipline of pharmacology and pain.

As a physician-scientist and as a mentor, Gavril (Gav) Pasternak has influenced the lives of multiple generations of patients, scientists, physicians, and students. Gav started his career by contributing to landmark discoveries in opioid pharmacology. Gav’s many scientific accomplishments must be viewed in the context of his approach to leadership and mentorship; the culture he established in his lab was inclusive, collaborative, creative, and scientifically rigorous. He encouraged different ways of thinking about and approaching problems and enjoyed pressure testing every side of an argument. This presentation will recount how I have benefited from Gav Pasternak’s mentorship throughout my career, as a postdoc in his lab and beyond.

The Pasternak lab was one of many that reported the presence of a 4th member of the opioid receptor superfamily (Gav named it KOR-3) shortly before I established my own lab. Over the years we’ve examined the function and regulation of this receptor in vitro and in vivo. This presentation will consider the contributions of the KOR-3/NOP receptor to acute and prolonged vestibular, nociceptive, behavioral and cellular changes following models of trauma (TBI and PTSD), in male and female rats.

We probe the structural basis of receptor function and signaling, integrating chemical synthesis, computation based design, crystallography and cryoEM-based approaches to design next generation of opioids.

The panel (former students, postdocs and fellows) will discuss which of Gavril’s pearls of wisdom or best practices had the most profound impact on their career development, scientific approach/impact/significance, mentoring, service and/or lives.