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Bruce Cohen

Senior Scientist
bruce_cohen
Contact information for Bruce Cohen
Contact Method Value
Mail Code: MC 156-29
Office: Church Laboratory
Phone: 626-395-2490
Email:

I joined the Lester laboratory initially as a postdoctoral fellow in 1989.  My research at that time was basic biophysics and electrophysiology.  We were interested in the relationship between the primary amino-acid structure, and functional properties, of nicotinic receptors. Our research resulted in a number of papers identifying the regions of the receptor that mediate ion permeation and agonist binding.  After serving for a number of years on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, I re-joined the laboratory as a staff scientist with my own NIH funding in 2003.  Since returning, my own research, and that of the laboratory, has become increasingly neurobiological in nature and more clinically oriented.  We are currently studying nicotinic ligands that might someday be useful as smoking cessation aids, and perhaps even in the prevention of Parkinson's disease.  I look forward to continued research in the Lester laboratory for the foreseeable future.