Contact Information

UCLA Department of Medicine
Box 951792
VA-CURE, Bldg 115, Rm 119
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1792
On-campus mail: 179247
Tel: (310) 478-3711 x41847
Fax: (310) 268-4963
E-mail: marvizon@ucla.edu
Web: www.cure.med.ucla.edu

Biosketch

Dr. Juan Carlos Marvizón is Assistant Professor at the Division of Digestive Diseases, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.Dr. Marvizón was born in 1957 in Rome, Italy. He majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). He received his Ph.D. in 1985 for his work on the glycine receptor at the Severo Ochoa Center of Molecular Biology in Madrid. During 1985, he worked as a research scientist at Pharmuka Laboratoires, a pharmaceutical company in Paris, France, investigating peripheral benzodiazepine receptors. He was then awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he studied the biochemistry of glycine and GABA receptors in relation to stress, and later became interested in NMDA receptors. From 1989 to 1991, he was faculty at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). Prior to coming to UCLA, he was Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, where he worked with Dr. Michel Baudry on the role of NMDA receptors in learning and memory. Dr. Marvizón came to UCLA in 1994. His current research focuses on the role of NMDA, substance P and opioid receptors in pain. He is the principal investigators of a grant from the NIH to study the release of substance P and opioids in the spinal cord.

Selected References

Marvizon JCG, Grady EF, Stefani E, Bunnett NW, Mayer EA. Substance P release in the dorsal horn assessed by receptor internalization: NMDA receptors counteract a tonic inhibition by GABAB receptors. Eur. J. Neurosci. 11:417-426, 1999.

Marvizón, JCG, Wang X, Matsuka Y, Neubert JK and Spigelman I. Relationship between capsaicin-evoked substance P release and NK1 receptor internalization in the rat dorsal horn. Neuroscience 118: 535-545, 2003.

Lao LJ., Song B and Marvizón JCG. Neurokinin release produced by capsaicin acting on the central terminals and axons of primary afferents: relationship with NMDA and GABAB receptors. Neuroscience 121: 667-680, 2003.

Song B and Marvizon JCG. Peptidases prevent m-opioid receptor internalization in dorsal horn neurons by endogenously released opioids. J. Neurosci. 23: 1847-1858, 2003.

Song B and Marvizón JCG. Dorsal horn neurons firing at high frequency, but not primary afferents, release opioid peptides that produce m-opioid receptor internalization in the rat spinal cord. J. Neurosci. 23: 9171-9184, 2003.