Daryl L. Davies, PhD, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy, Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of Southern California. In addition, he is the Director of the MS program in Management of Drug Development, in the International Center of Regulatory Science located in the School of Pharmacy. Dr. Davies earned his Bachelor and Master Degrees in Biology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He earned his PhD in 1996 from the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology at USC School of Pharmacy.
Dr. Davies is the director of the Alcohol and Brain Research Laboratory at USC. His research revolves around the development of novel treatments for alcohol use disorders (AUDs). AUDs ranks third on the list of preventable causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States, having a major national impact affecting over 18 million people and causing over 100,000 deaths annually. The economic burden to society for AUDs is in excess of $220 billion annually which exceeds the costs of other leading preventable causes of death such as cigarette smoking and physical inactivity. Presently, pharmacotherapies, even in conjunction with psychosocial strategies, have had limited success in treating AUDs with approximately 70% of patients relapsing back into heavy drinking within one year. Finally, drug development for AUDs is a relatively young field compared to other diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and psychiatric disorders. Therefore, the development of new treatments for AUDs represents an important unmet medical need.
In response to this challenge, Dr. Davies and his team have focused on identifying molecular targets of alcohol action in the CNS. Recent findings from this line of investigation have resulted in the identification of specific targets for which therapeutic compounds have been designed and are currently under investigation. This multidisciplinary endeavor has brought together diverse but complementary group of scientists which include behavioral, pharmacological, electrophysiological, molecular, genetic, computational and medicinal chemistry expertise’s to maximize the potential for success. This team includes Drs. Ronald Alkana and Stan Louie (School of Pharmacy), Dr. Michael Neely (Keck School of Medicine), Dr. Nicos Petasis (Dornsife College LAS), Dr. Debra Finn (Oregon Health & Science University), and Dr. James Trudell (Stanford).