The mission of the Van Rijn lab is to uncover new strategies to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders. We specifically investigate the heavily co-morbid triad of ​drug use disorders, chronic pain disorders and mood disorders. Our primary target, the ​delta opioid receptor, is involved in the neuropharmacology of all three disorders and thus offers an exciting novel approach to treat these disorders. The Van Rijn lab covers all aspects of preclinical drug development including drug synthesis, drug screening, pharmacological characterization both in vitro and in vivo. We also perform mechanistic studies to improve our understanding of the etiology of these disorders.

News - 2020

September 9th, 2020 - Congratulations to MeeJung Ko for receiving an honorable mention for the Linda and Jack Gill Graduate Student Award.

July 29th, 2020 - A manuscript by Logan Ganzen and the Leung Lab entitled "Drug screening with zebrafish visual behavior identifies carvedilol as a potential treatment for retinitis pigmentosa" that we collaborated on has been deposited at BioRxiv.

July 23-24th, 2020 - Anna Gutridge, Arryn Blaine and Alex French are giving virtual talks at the 2020 International Narcotics Research Conference. Anna discusses her work on analgesia of akuamma alkaloids, Arryn talks about her findings on the seizure effect of delta opioids and Alex presents his study of biased kappa opioids on alcohol use

July 23rd, 2020 - Our second collaborative work with the Altman group "modulating b-arrestin 2 recruitment at delta and mu opioid receptors" in which we investigate enkephalinergic opioid peptide pharmacology has been deposited at ChemRxiv

​June 9th, 2020 - Congratulations to Anna Gutridge for being award a highly competitive 1-year pre-doctoral Fellowship by the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education.

June 3rd, 2020 - Congratulations to Arryn Blaine for having been awarded an AGEP (Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) Fellowship in recognition of her commitment to promote diversity in STEM. AGEP will provide money and resources for developing Arryn's career.

May 13th, 2020 - Congratulations to Angel Lin for winning 2nd place in the pharmacy category for her virtual oral presentation "Subcellular GPCR Signaling in Neuropsychiatric Disorders" at the office of undergraduate Research Spring Symposium.

May 1st, 2020 - Congratulations to Angel Lin for graduating with a BA from the School of Health Sciences with a Major in "health sciences pre-professional" and a minor in Biology and for getting accepted into a podiatry medical college in Southern California.

May 1st, 2020 - Congratulations to Anna Gutridge for receiving a training grant from the College of Pharmacy to attend the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Biotech course, which will be held virtually this year.

May 1st,2020 - Congratulations to Kendall Mores for graduating with a Pharm.D. degree and receiving the Academic Achievement Award in this program as well and for getting accepted into a Pharmacy residency program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital

April 29th, 2020 - Congratulations to Hongyu Su and Kendall Mores for graduating with a BS in Pharmaceutical sciences and both receiving a research recognition award. Additional congratulations to Kendall for receiving the Academic Achievement Award. Congratulations to Hongyu for being accepted (but deferring one year) to the University of Michigan Graduate school.

April, 2020 - Our paper on kratom alkaloids use for alcohol use disorder was highlighted as editor's choice in the British Journal of Pharmacology.

March 30th, 2020 - Congratulations to Anna Gutridge for being selected as participant into the Purdue mini MBA program.

March 9th, 2020 - The St. Louis College of Pharmacy published a news release for the print publication of our kratom article in the British Journal of Pharmacology.

March 6th, 2020 - Congratulations to Anna Gutridge for winning 1st prize in the Purdue Health and Disease Poster session competition (Neuroscience and Neurodegenerative Disease category).

February 25th, 2020 - Arryn Blaine and Anna Gutridge have been awarded travel fellowships from the Purdue College of Pharmacy to present their research at the 2020 International Narcotics Research Conference in Valencia, Spain.

February 12th, 2020 - Mee Jung Ko and Anna Gutridge presented posters at the Sigma Xi poster session at Purdue University

February 11th, 2020 - A spotlight article in Trends in Pharmaceutical Sciences highlighted the DNA-encoded library assay recently published in a JACS paper we collaborated on with the Krusemark lab.

January 24th, 2020 - Dr. Van Rijn has started his sabbatical in the laboratory of Dr. Brian Shoichet in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California San Francisco. Dr. van Rijn will learn new skills in how to dock ultra-large virtual libraries at GPCRs, in particular the newly published agonist-bound DOR structures.

January 15th, 2020 - Mee Jung Ko, 5th year PULSe graduate student in the lab successfully defended her thesis "Molecular mechanisms of G protein-coupled receptor signaling in the modulation of anxiety, Fear and Pain" completing her final requirement in the program. Congratulations to Dr. Mee Jung Ko!!
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If you appreciate the research carried out in the Van Rijn lab and support our goals feel free to donate to the advancement of science. Donations will be used to help support (undergraduate) students and carry out experiments exploring exciting new preliminary projects, currently not funded through other mechanisms.
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RECENT PUBLICATIONS

July 29th, 2020 - A manuscript by Logan Ganzen and the Leung Lab entitled "Drug screening with zebrafish visual behavior identifies carvedilol as a potential treatment for retinitis pigmentosa" that we collaborated on has been deposited at BioRxiv.

July 23rd, 2020 - Our second collaborative work with the Altman group "modulating b-arrestin 2 recruitment at delta and mu opioid receptors" in which we investigate enkephalinergic opioid peptide pharmacology has been deposited at ChemRxiv

December 9th, 2019 - Our paper "The meta-position of Phe4 in leu-enkephalin regulates potency, selectivity, functional activity and signaling bias at the delta and mu opioid receptors" has been accepted for publication in Molecules and will be part of the special issue: "Opioids and Their Receptors Present and Emerging Concepts in Opioid Drug Discovery"

October 16th, 2019 - A paper by the Krusemark lab "Selection of DNA-encoded Libraries to Protein Targets Within and On Living Cells" that we collaborated on has been accepted by the Journal of the American Chemical Society

October 15th, 2019 - Our paper "G protein-biased kratom-alkaloids and synthetic carfentanil-amide opioids as potential treatments for alcohol use disorder" has been accepted for publication in the British Journal of Pharmacology

October 2nd, 2019 - We deposited our pre-print "beta-arrestin depedendent ERK signaling positively correlates with reduced anxiety-like and conditioned fear-related behavior in mice " on BioRxiv

April 1st, 2019 - Our review of recently developed G protein-biased kappa opioid receptor agonists and their therapeutic potential has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Pharmacology.

February 27th, 2019 - Our paper describing how different methods for euthanasia influence basal MAPK activity in male and female mice has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

February 4th, 2019 - Our paper describing how repeated use of the psychoactive substance ethylphenidate impacts neurochemistry and reward learning in adolescent male and female mice has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

January 11th, 2019 - Our paper in collaboration with the Fai lab providing "Critical evaluation of TRPA1-mediated locomotive behavior in zebrafish as a screening tool for novel anti-nociceptive drug discovery.​" has been accepted for publication in Scientific Reports.
Disclaimer of opinion
The information, statements and opinions presented on the the Van Rijn lab website are solely expressed by Dr. van Rijn and do not necessarily represent views held by Purdue University.