Miriam Stoeber
Miriam Stoeber is an associate professor in the Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism at the University of Geneva. In 2019, she started her research group thanks to an SNSF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship. She initially did her doctorate at ETH Zurich, then pursued research at the University of Oxford (UK) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF, USA). She specialised in cell biology, pharmacology, structural biology, and neuroscience.
She and her team aim to discover the cellular basis of neuromodulatory drug action. To do this, she is developing new approaches to detect and modulate the activity of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) at specific subcellular sites. She believes that understanding the spatio-temporal logic of signal transduction is an essential prerequisite for the development of more reliable therapies capable of inducing desired physiological responses. GPCRs are targeted by 35% of authorised drugs, including therapeutic treatments for various neuropsychiatric disorders.
Optimising GPCR modulation
Modulating the activity of neuronal circuits is essential for information processing in the brain. GPCRs are the targets of most neuromodulatory ligands and exhibit extremely diverse neuronal expression patterns. Receptors can be located in different compartments of sub-neuronal membranes. When activated, GPCRs promote signalling cascades that have a critical impact on neuronal physiology. Her research aims to understand how GPCRs in different cellular compartments induce the action of endogenous ligands or therapeutic drugs. Her work is focusing on opioid and serotonin receptors, important therapeutic targets for the treatment of pain and neuropsychiatric disorders, respectively. Her team is also developing the next generation of GPCR modulators by exploiting the remarkable characteristics of heavy chain only antibodies (so-called nanobodies). These can bind GPCRs with optimal affinity and selectivity.
