CHARLES D. NICHOLS, PhD
BOARD MEMBER
Dr. Nichols currently is a professor of pharmacology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, LA. He earned his B.S. at Purdue University, his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, and performed his postdoctoral work at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the Department of Pharmacology researching 5-HT2 receptor pharmacology. He has been studying 5-HT2A receptors and the cellular, molecular, genetic, and behavioral effects of psychedelics for over 25 years and is considered one of the world’s top experts on the biological effects of psychedelics in the brain and body. He is a founding member of the International Society for Research on Psychedelics, and its current President. He is also Co-Editor in Chief of Psychedelic Medicine. Key discoveries he and his laboratory have made include elucidation of the effects of psychedelics on gene expression in the brain, identification and characterization of the specific cells in the brain that directly respond to psychedelics, and the development of new rodent and fruit fly experimental systems recapitulating the long-lasting antidepressant-like effects of psychedelics for mechanistic study. Dr. Nichols and his laboratory also made the discovery that psychedelics are extremely potent anti-inflammatory agents, and can have full efficacy at levels far below those necessary to induce behavioral effects in several models of human inflammatory diseases.
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