From B.Sc. to Ph.D., my shuffle off to Buffalo

From the fall of 1978 until the summer of 1982, I was a graduate student in the Laboratory of Dr. David Triggle in the Department of Biochemical Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, State University of New York at Buffalo. This contribution permits me the opportunity to take you back in time into David's laboratory and tell you the story of how my early research career was borne and to provide a glimpse into some of the accomplishments that David, I and my fellow graduates students made. The central theme of my research was to bring together the many events that controlled the contraction of guinea-pig ileal longitudinal muscle, from the binding of muscarinic agonists, the movement of mono- and divalent cations that control depolarization to contraction itself and the differences between muscarinic and non-muscarinic mediated contraction and tachyphylaxis. From these studies, we were able to provide concrete data supporting a fluid muscarinic receptor–effector coupling model that challenged the concept of spare receptors. We also were able to develop methods to quantitate the binding sites for dihydropyrine calcium channel antagonists thereby opening the door to a flood of studies that furthered our understanding of these clinically employed drugs, providing a new target to elucidate the mechanism(s) of action of drugs that act outside of and within the central nervous system.

Model of contraction in guinea pig ileal longitudinal smooth muscle from doctoral thesis of Gordon T. Bolger; relationship between agonist activation of receptor and coupling of effectors.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slide