Drs. Abbott and Manville’s Viewpoint article on the role of sodium channels in new and future analgesics has been published in JPET. Dr. Roberto Levi, who spearheaded JPET Viewpoint articles and was the handling editor for our article, very sadly passed away suddenly in early December, 2024. Dr. Levi was a wonderful friend and colleague…
Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute, UCI
Geoff Abbott gives a talk on botanical medicines at the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute Annual Meeting, October 2023…
Daily Mail online article on Abbott Bioelectricity Lab botanical medicine research
Professor Geoff Abbott is a botanical Indiana Jones. He leads expeditions into Earth’s wild places to find medicinal treasures – herbal remedies used by indigenous peoples that may contain life-saving chemicals that will revolutionise treatments for serious disorders….
Hiding in plain sight…Abbott Lab “Behind the Paper” Blog post in Springer Nature Research communities
It took an expedition to a beach in the US Virgin Islands to uncover the incredible potassium channel opening capability of gentisic acid – a dihydroxybenzoic acid present in many of the foods we eat, active metabolite of aspirin, and active component of topical skin whiteners used for decades….
The Abbott Bioelectricity Lab celebrates some recent publication success
Congratulations Rian, Ryan and Derk on recent publications in Comms Chemistry, Comms Biology and Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience!…
Molecular mechanisms of cocaine addiction and its suppression by carnosic acid from rosemary
In a paper published this week in Neuron, the Beier lab at UCI in collaboration with the Abbott lab describes the circuits underlying cocaine addiction, and the discovery that KCNQ3 and KCNQ5 are downregulated in the globus pallidus following cocaine administration. Remarkably, increasing KCNQ3/5 activity with carnosic acid (based on results from our prior work),…
KCNB1 mutation underlies global developmental delay and seizures
The Abbott Bioelectricity Lab in collaboration with pediatric neurologist Dr. Rich Sidlow have described the molecular basis for global developmental delay and seizures in a fraternal twin – the disorder arises from a loss-of-function sequence variant (P385L) in the KCNB1 gene, which encodes the Kv2.1 potassium channel. The paper was published today in Frontiers in…
Polynesian traditional anticonvulsant tree yields the most potent known Kv7.3 opener
The Abbott Lab’s discovery of the most potent known Kv7.3 potassium channel opener, from the portia tree (Thespesia populnea), was published this week in Communications Chemistry. A screen of 1,444 plants we collected mostly from California and the US Virgin Islands revealed Kv7.2/3-opening activity in portia tree extract, and from there we found the active…
In Search of New Medicines from Plants – Abbott Lab “Behind the Paper” Blog post in Springer Nature Research communities
Up to 40% of current medicines are derived from plants. In an age of multi-million synthetic-compound screens, my lab is taking a different approach: collecting plants, screening their extracts against selected potassium channels, and investigating the compounds underlying activity of the hits….
Molecular basis for medicinal activity of witch hazel and fireweed
Congratulations to co-first authors Drs. Rian Manville and Ryan Yoshimura for our paper published today in Communications Biology!…