Professor Brian Cox

Dr Cox's research has focused on characterizing receptors utilized by opiate drugs and their endogenous ligands, from his early work in London on the receptors mediating actions of opiates in the brain and periphery and on the mechanisms of opiate tolerance and dependence, to recent studies evaluating epigenetic mechanisms in longer-term adaptive changes in neural function induced by opiate drugs. After moving to the USA, he participated in the identification of the endogenous opioid peptides -endorphin and dynorphin in pituitary gland and brain, and evaluated factors that regulate the expression of opioid peptides and their receptors, including stress, neural injury and chronic drug administration. He has also studied inhibition of neurotransmitter release by opioids in specific neural pathways in brain. Recent collaborative studies have focused on mechanisms underlying changes in the function of central reward pathways and their regulation by endogenous opioids after early life stress, and on the use of mass-spectrometric techniques to evaluate changes in the expression of lipids in discrete regions of brain after traumatic brain injury.