The keynote address of Carroll College’s 2025 Student Research Festival will take place on April 24, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. in the Lower Campus Center. Carroll alum and Nobel lecturer Bryan L. Roth MD, PhD, '77, the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine, will present:
Title: The Promises and Perils of Psychedelic Pharmacology for Psychiatry
This presentation will address how psychedelic drugs including psilocybin, N,N'-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) are undergoing a renaissance as potentially useful drugs for various neuropsychiatric diseases, with a rapid onset of therapeutic activity. Notably, phase II trials have shown that psilocybin can produce statistically significant clinical effects following one or two administrations in depression and anxiety. These findings have inspired a 'gold rush' of commercial interest, with nearly 60 companies already formed to explore opportunities for psychedelics in treating diverse diseases. Dr. Roh will also cover the emerging area of therapeutics, covering both controversies and areas of consensus related to the opportunities and perils of psychedelic and psychedelic-inspired therapeutics.
This event is free and open to the public.
About Bryan L. Roth MD, PhD
Bryan L. Roth MD, PhD is the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Dr. Roth received his BA from Carroll College in 1977 and an MD and PhD (Biochemistry) from St. Louis University in 1983 and subsequently trained in pharmacology (NIH), molecular biology (Stanford), and Psychiatry (Stanford). Prior to coming to UNC, Dr. Roth was a Professor of Psychiatry and Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where his clinical specialty was treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
Dr. Roth has published more than 500 papers in the general areas of molecular pharmacology, structural biology, and synthetic biology, including more than 40 papers published in Science, Nature, and Cell over the past decade. Scientific highlights include the creation of the widely used chemogenetic platform dubbed ‘DREADDs’ and the elucidation of the structures of LSD and antipsychotic drugs bound to their molecular targets. Dr. Roth has been a ‘Highly Cited Scientist’ for many years with nearly 100,000 citations to his work (H-index =152).
Dr. Roth has been engaged in CNS drug discovery for decades and has served as an advisor to most of the major biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Roth is currently a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of Septerna, Epiodyne, and Imprint Bio. Many of the technologies highlighted in talks by Dr. Roth have been licensed to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as have many of his patents. Most recently, one of the compounds invented by Dr. Roth (BMB-101) was licensed to Bright Minds Biosciences and is currently in Phase II clinical trials. Dr. Roth was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2014 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. He has received many honors, including the Westheimer Prize (Harvard University, Chemistry), the Goodman and Gilman Award for Receptor Pharmacology (American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics), the PhRMA Foundation Excellence in Pharmacology Award, a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award, and the IUPHAR Analytical Pharmacology Lectureship. Dr. Roth also given more than 40 named lectures including a Presidential Special Lecturer at the 2018 Society for Neurosciences meeting and an invited lecture to the Nobel Forum, from the Nobel Prize Foundation, in 2024.
Key Papers: