Yang Li

Professor

Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Short Biography

Dr. Li Yang, professor, principal investigator, department of neuropharmacology at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIMM). Dr. Li received his B.S. from Shandong University and Master Degree from East China Normal University. After receiving Ph.D. from SIMM in 2002, he worked as postdoctoral researcher at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. From September 2009, he was recruited to SIMM through "Bairen Talent" program. Research interests include new targets, new drugs, and pharmacological mechanisms for mental illness, such as, depression, anxiety disorder, and Parkinson's disease. Build up screening service for targets as monoamine receptors (DA, 5-HT,NE), ion channels (NMDA, GABA, hERG, KCNQ, K2P, CFTR). Dr. Li has published more than 60 papers in academic journals such as Cell, Nature Communications and PNAS. He serves as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Academy of Neuropsychiatric Pharmacology, member of the Society of Neuroscience, Physiology, Biophysics and other branches, editorial board members of Frontier in Physiology. 

Presentation Topic: A novel antidepressant mechanism that targets NMDA receptors on GABAergic interneurons

• Ketamine is a noncompetitive antagonist of the glutamatergic N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor

• Selective GluN2D antagonism is sufficient to produce rapid antidepressant-like effects

• GluN2D-containing NMDAR on GABAergic interneurons is a potential depression treatment target