About Us

• We are an academic high-throughput screening center.
• Our scientists have extensive experience in drug discovery research.
• We have experience in developing, validating and implementing high throughput electrophysiology screening assays for a broad range of drug targets in the central and peripheral nervous system. We can develop an ion channel essay using either known ion channel cDNAs or using proprietary cDNA or cRNA provided by a client.

Scientific Staff

• David H. Farb, Ph.D., is the Director of the HTEP Screening Center within the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology.  He has over thirty years of drug discovery research experience in both academia and pharmaceutical companies.  Dr. Farb has over sixty scientific publications and dozen of issued patents. Dr. Farb has served as a consultant to large and small pharmaceutical companies, intellectual property law and portfolio investment firms. Dr. Farb was a member of the founding Scientific Advisory Boards of CoCensys and DOV Pharmaceuticals. He was the Scientific Founder of Scion Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Wyeth), which commercialized his patents on high throughput electrophysiology and small molecule modulators of amino acid receptors. Dr. Farb's current research is directed toward understanding the mechanisms of action of abused substances and steroid hormones and their interactions with excitatory and inhibitory amino acid receptors in the central nervous system. This research focuses on the mechanism of action and discovery of neuromodulators as therapeutic agents and on the structure, function, and cellular dynamics of ion channels and receptors in the brain and spinal cord.


• Terrell T. Gibbs, Ph.D. is the Associate Director for Electrophysiology in the HTEP Screening Center.  He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, has over twenty years of research experience, and has authored over thirty research articles and patents. His research efforts focus on the pharmacology of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators and on mechanisms of modulation and regulation of neurotransmitter receptor function, including up-regulation, down-regulation, desensitization, and tolerance. Current studies address the acute and chronic effects of modulators of amino acid receptor function, including benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and steroids. Computational and electrophysiological methods are used to evaluate thermodynamically plausible models for receptor function.


• Shelley J. Russek, Ph.D. is the Associate Director for Molecular Biology in the HTEP Screening Center within the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology.  She holds a Ph.D. from Boston University School of Medicine, has over fifteen years of research experience, and has authored over thirty research articles and patents. Her main research interests focus on the dynamic regulation of gene expression in the nervous system. She investigates transcriptional control in the CNS employing a variety of techniques, including yeast hybrid assays, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and transfection into primary neuronal cultures, in order to identify key regulatory elements and transcription factors that specifically enhance or repress expression of GABAA and NMDA receptor subunits.


• Dmytro Berezhnoy, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist and Head of Operations of the HTEP Screening Center within the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology.  He holds a M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Bern and has over eight years of research experience in the field of drug design and the modulation of G-protein coupled receptors and ligand-gated ion channels. His main research interests are modulation and structure-function studies of ligand-gated ion channels and molecular modeling of interactions between these receptors and their orthosteric and allosteric ligands.


• Scott Downing, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist and Head of Biomedical Engineering and Bioinformatics at HTEP Screening Center.  He holds a M.S. degree in Engineering and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Neuroscience from Boston University School of Medicine. Currently he is a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology. His research is focused on the activation and modulation of ligand-gated ion channels and the modeling of these processes.


• Sandra Medakovich, B.A. is a Research Scientist. She holds a B.A. degree in Biology from Boston University. Her main research efforts are focused on the screening and characterization of potential drug candidates, as well as the characterization of various neurosteroids on NMDA and GABA-A receptor subtypes.


• Sabita Bandyopadhyay , B.S., M.S. is a Research Coordinator.


• Ramona G. Faris , B.S., M.S. is a Research Coordinator.