Lawrence Toll

Department at SRI International, where he conducted basic and translational research in the fields of pain and addiction and also managed contract drug screening and other R & D services performed by teams of cellular, molecular, animal, and behavioral biologists. An author of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, he is a recognized expert and leading researcher in the field of neuroscience, particularly in relation to addiction neurobiology and the pharmacology of drugs with potential addiction liability, such as opiates. Dr. Toll is a co-discoverer of the “nociceptin” opioid peptide and was part of the Opiate Research team at SRI that first researched potential non-addicting opioids in the late 1980s. Dr. Toll has performed numerous selected assessments of neurochemical drugs for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). As part of NIDA’s Opiate and Cocaine Treatment Discovery Programs, he tested a very large number of compounds for affinities and activities at the three opioid receptors, 5 dopamine receptors, several 5-HT receptors, PCP receptors and sigma receptors. In conjunction with this project and CPDD, Dr. Toll and his team published the definitive in vitro profile of opioid- and cocaine-related ligands. In addition to standard and unknown opiate-related compounds his lab has collaborated with many medicinal chemists to characterize the activity of a large number of compounds, including PPL’s compounds. Larry holds a BA degree in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego and a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles as well as a Postdoc. in biological chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles and a Postdoc. in pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University.