Biography
High received a B.A. degree in Zoology (1975) and a M.A. degree in Zoology (1976) from the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her PhD (1981) from the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Personal Statement
I attended the University of Texas in Austin, my hometown, receiving both a BA and an MA. I received my PhD in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). Laboratory studies while at UTMB in Galveston began my bench to bedside and beside to bench studies with clinician scientists. We described a novel visceral pain pathway in the dorsal column midline to explain why punctate midline spinal cord lesions provide effective relief for cancer patients with intractable pain provided by two neurosurgical collaborators, Drs. Robert Hirshberg and Hank Nauta. Their dorsal column midline lesion approach to pelvic visceral pain is now used worldwide. Current clinical collaborators at UNM include Drs. Reza Ehsanian and Peter Shin pursuing pain targets in discarded human samples.
My overall research career aim is to stop pain, through pursuit of understanding of pain relief mechanisms and development of therapies for testing in chronic neuropathic pain models. My research efforts center around pre-clinical studies of chronic pain and the nervous system components providing information to the brain about pain. This entails its causal mechanisms and the anxiety, stress, and depression induced by pain. Although clinical trials and translational studies with clinicians have been a highlight, use and development of translationally relevant animal models have been a constant. This includes chronic and acute rodent inflammatory models of orofacial pain, arthritis, back pain, nerve injury, and visceral models such as pancreatitis for translational testing of new and ?new use? clinical drugs. Studies have found effective use of mitochondrial stress anti-oxidant/protectors, viral vectors expressing endogenous opioid met-enkephalin, small antibodies directed toward pain targets, glutamate receptor antagonists, and cannabinoids. Our studies utilize tests of pain- and anxiety-related behavior, live cell calcium imaging, immunocytochemistry, epigenetics, cell culture, RTPCR, western blot, tract tracing, and fMRI methodologies.
I have led research projects for numerous NIH grants (R21, RO1, PO1 subprojects), DoD and VA grants. I maintained continuous funded support for thirty years, providing major portions of my salary (30-100%). I have published over 180 manuscripts in peer reviewed journals, including Science and PNAS, and I hold numerous patents. Recent patents for two non-opioid small single chain (scFv) antibodies include their ability to significantly inhibit targets upregulated in chronic neuropathic pain. Single dose of one antibody returns pain-, anxiety-, and depression-like behaviors to baseline. This project has received NIH, DoD, and VA Merit grant funding. I am an Associate Editor (Pharmacology) for PAIN (official journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain) and recently was named a Distinguished Professor and an Innovation Fellow (UNM Rainforest Innovation) sat the University of New Mexico.
Areas of Specialty
Physiology & Biophysics
Gender
Female
Languages
- English