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Distinguished Professor Bruce Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, is the recipient of the biennial Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism, sponsored by American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). The award consists of a $2,000 honorarium and a commemorative medal. His work will be published in the journal Drug Metabolism and Disposition.

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In groundbreaking research, the team of 16 scientists led by Dr. Guodong Zhang of the Dr. Hammock laboratory discovered cytochrome P450 epoxygenase metabolites of omega-3 fatty acid DHA or epoxy docosapentaenoic acids (EDPs) block blood supply to the tumor and thus inhibit tumor growth and metastasis.

The natural EDPs were further stabilized by a drug called a soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor which is already under development to control pain and hypertension. The research is to be published the week of April 1-5 in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The studies, conducted on mice, also suggest that a combination of omega-3 diet and some anti-cancer drugs such as sorafenib.

Other co-authors of the paper in addition to Hammock were Jun Yang, Jun-Yan Liu, King Sing Stephen Lee, Arzu Ulu, and Sung Hee Hwang, all from the Hammock Lab; Lisa Mahakian, Xiaowen Hu, Katherine Ferrara, Sarah Tam, and Elizabeth Ingham, UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering; Hiromi Wettersten of the UC Davis Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine; Robert Weiss, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Division of Nephrology and U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center, Sacramento; and Dipak Panigrahy and Mark Kieran of the Vascular Biology Program, Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Full Story from Science Daily

The research, in the lab of cardiologist and cell biologist Nipavan Chiamvimonvat of the School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, utilized a treatment involving a compound synthesized by Sing Lee and Sung Hee Hwang in the our lab. In research published this week in the PNAS, the 11-scientist team from the Chiamvimonvat and Hammock labs determined the molecular mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitors in a heart attack.

Every year some 935,000 U.S. residents have a heart attack, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease kills about 600,000 a year, accounting for one in every four deaths in the nation.

The Hammock/Chiamvimonvat collaborations earlier demonstrated the beneficial effects of several compounds that are potent inhibitors of the soluble epoxide hydrolase in different models of cardiac enlargement and heart failure. In this study, they treated murine (rodent) patients with the compound that resulted in “significant improvement in cardiac function after a heart attack.”

The project drew major support from the National Institutes of Health, Veterans’ Administration, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Med-into-Grad Training Program to UC Davis, American Heart Association, Western States Affiliate Predoctoral Fellowship Award,  Fellow-to-Faculty Award from Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation, and the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Award from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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