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BCAS faculty member Leon Coleman, MD, PhD has received the 2025  Division for Neuropharmacology Early Career Award from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) . The ASPET Division for Neuropharmacology established this award to recognize and honor a young independent investigator working in neuropharmacology.

The award recognizes Dr. Coleman’s his publication quality, research originality, teaching and funding record, patents, and contribution to pharmacology.

Dr. Coleman has a history of making pioneering discoveries in the field of neuropharmacology, particularly alcohol use disorder (AUD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research. Recently, he has focused on finding novel regulators of immune pathology for alcohol abuse, Alzheimer’s disease, and severe burn injury. Dr. Coleman has found that heavy alcohol use promotes Alzheimer’s pathology through persistent activation of microglia leading to the disruption of neuronal lipid metabolism. He identified the loss of neuronal lysosomal acid lipase as a fundamental feature of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease that is enhanced by heavy alcohol use and midlife obesity. This has resulted in a US patent, and the development of novel PET ligands for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. His work has identified extracellular vesicles are fundamental drivers of immune dysfunction in AUD and burn injury. The targeted removal of these detrimental vesicles is now under investigation as a novel immunotherapy approach.

The award will be presented by the Division for Neuropharmacology on April 5, 2025, during the ASPET 2025 Annual Meeting in Portland, Ore. Additionally, Dr. Coleman has been invited to give a lecture on his work as part of the annual meeting.

ASPET is a 4,000-member scientific society whose members conduct basic and clinical pharmacological research and work for academia, government, pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and non-profit organizations. ASPET members work in a variety of different fields and include neuroscientists, toxicologists, chemical biologists, pharmacists, cardiovascular scientists and many more. Though very diverse, our members have a common bond through their membership in ASPET. Members’ research efforts help develop new medicines and therapeutic agents to fight existing and emerging diseases.