Lauren Slosky
Assistant Professor University of Minnesota
Lauren Slosky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and a member of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction, a multidisciplinary initiative within the University of Minnesota’s Medical School to advance research and treatment in the field of drug addiction. Dr. Slosky’s research is focused on understanding how neuropeptide G protein-coupled receptors regulate reward, pain, and motivated behavior – and how these receptors can be targeted for therapeutic benefit. She is currently working to identify novel strategies for the treatment of stimulant and opioid addictions, with a focus on the development of allosteric and functionally selective small molecules. Dr. Slosky was awarded a B.S. with honors in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Psychology from The University of Arizona in 2011. She received a Ph.D. in Medical Pharmacology from The University of Arizona in 2015, under the mentorship of Dr. Todd W. Vanderah. Dr. Slosky completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Marc G. Caron at Duke University and joined the Department of Pharmacology as an Assistant Professor in 2021.
Seminars
- Identifying a conserved intracellular allosteric pocket on GPCRs, to design small molecules that directly modulate G-protein engagement, enabling unusually strong and clean pathway-selective signaling bias
- Selectively restricting or promoting access of specific transducers at the GPCR core, to allow rational tuning of signaling outputs, achieving desired therapeutic pathways while minimizing on-target side effects
- Leveraging a pocket that is conserved yet structurally variable across the GPCR superfamily, to provide a scalable framework for tailoring receptor-specific biased ligands and discovering new activities guided by ternary-complex insight
- What are the innovative methodologies to study biased, endosomal, and oligomeric GPCR signaling?
- How can we establish best practices for interpreting complex signaling data and distinguishing true pharmacological effects?
- How to translate mechanistic insights into improved GPCRs-targeted drug discovery and development
