Discovery of neuroprotective marine natural products using a bioimaging/optogenetics approach and Drosophila melanogaster

Oxidative stress and cellular excitotoxicity is inherent in the pathophysiology of an array of devastating human ailments. Natural products have played an important role in the treatment of a variety of human diseases and continue to drive the modern drug discovery and development process. The overall goal of this project is to design a novel neuroactivity assay to identify natural products capable of inducing neuroprotection against oxidative stress. This project will focus on a group of natural products, pseudopterosins, known for their potent biological activities with a novel mechanism of action. We hypothesize that these compounds may be of potential therapeutic benefit in protecting neurons and/or neural function both during and after episodes of excitotoxicity in disease states.