Dr. Xiaoning Bi, joined COMP in 2005 as an associate professor of physiology. She is investigating molecularly engineered mice to determine the cellular biology that leads to a rare human neurodegenerative disease, Niemann Pick type C. She has also has been involved in ground breaking studies of the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory and the underlying mechanisms leading to cellular pathology in animal models of Alzheimer s disease. Details of her ongoing research program can be found at her web page: http://www.westernu.edu/xp/edu/comp/faculty-bi.xml

Dr. Edward Wagner is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology. He joined the faculty of the College of Osteopathic Medicine in September, 2001. His research interests focus on how cannabinoids regulate the hypothalamic feeding circuitry to affect changes in feeding behavior and energy homeostasis in male and female subjects, and how gonadal steroids modulate this interaction. He uses state-of-the-art instrumentation to assess cannabinoid-induced changes in daily and hourly food intake, as well as meal size, frequency and duration, core body temperature and weight gain/loss, and how these changes correlate with alterations in neurotransmitter release and cell excitability at anorexigenic proopiomelanocortin (POMC) synapses within the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus. He recently has discovered that males are much more sensitive to the appetite-modulating properties of CB1 receptor agonists and antagonists than females, which correlates with marked sex differences in the pre- and postsynaptic actions of cannabinoids at POMC synapses. These findings indicate that gender should be taken into account when considering the use of cannabinoids in the treatment of HIV/AIDS- or cancer-related cachexia, or obesity.