Dr. Steven Mansoor Nature study selected for Postdoctoral Paper of the Year
September 11, 2017
Members of the School of Medicine Alumni Council have selected a paper by Steven Mansoor, M.D. Ph.D. '09 R '17, as the 2017 School of Medicine Alumni Association Postdoctoral Paper of the Year Award.
The paper is entitled "X-Ray Structures Define Human P2X3 Receptor Gating Cycle and Antagonist Action" and was published in Nature in October 2016.
"Steve's article in Nature is a milestone in the ion channel field and in studies of P2X receptors because he was able to solve high-resolution structures of all of the iconic conformational states of the human P2X3 receptor – apo/resting, ATP-bound/activated,ATP-bound/desensitized and antagonist-bound/closed," said Eric Gouaux, Ph.D., senior scientist in the Vollum Institute. "This was a truly outstanding accomplishment. These studies not only defined the structural basis for the complete gating cycle of a human P2X receptor, but also, to the best of my knowledge, they provided the first complete gating cycle for any ligand or voltage-gated ion channel. This is truly significant translational research because it means that structure-based drug design targeting these receptors can be employed as a strategy moving forward. The work is of broad and general significance because it shows how the receptor adopts distinct molecular structures in different functional states."
Dr. Mansoor works in the OHSU Knight Cardiovascular Institute and is an assistant professor of medicine, OHSU School of Medicine. He graduated from Reed College in 1997 with a B.A. in biochemistry and molecular biology before matriculating into the M.D./Ph.D. program at OHSU. For his Ph.D. dissertation, he developed fluorescence techniques to study membrane protein structure and conformational changes, with a focus on understanding the dynamics of G-protein coupled receptor activation. He completed a clinical fellowship in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at OHSU, during which he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Gouaux lab to investigate the structure/function of purinergic receptors. He's received a K99/R00 Career Development Award to continue his structural biology work on purinergic receptors. He currently spends 80 percent of his time pursuing basic science research and 20 percent of his time seeing patients in clinic.
Recipients of the Postdoctoral Paper of the Year Award receive a $750 prize.