School of Pharmacy

James David Adams, PhD

Research Interest

I am interested in California medicinal plants and am learning from Cecilia Garcia (Chumash Healer) how to use these plants. Having recently discovered new pharmacologically interesting compounds in three different California plants, I am now in the process of further characterizing these compounds. Future work will involve testing these compounds in animal models and clinical trials to find out if they have important medicinal properties.

Biography

Dr. Adams received his PhD from UC San Francisco in 1981 in Pharmacology and Toxicology. His postdoctoral experience was at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He served as a research assistant professor at Washington State University before coming to USC School of Pharmacy in 1987.

Dr. Adams has worked on cytochrome P450 metabolism of ketamine, phencyclidine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the laboratories of Neal Castagnoli, Anthony Trevor and Don Jerina. Under the direction of Jerry Mitchell, Dr. Adams developed a widely used assay for GSH and GSSG and showed how GSH and GSSG levels change during oxidative stress in many organs.

In collaboration with Enrique Cadenas, Dr. Adams discovered the mechanism of redox cycling of MPTP, the toxic agent that can produce Parkinson's disease in humans and animals. In collaboration with Jean Shih, Dr. Adams showed that MAO knockout mice are resistant to MPTP toxicity.

Lori Klaidman and Dr. Adams developed a widely used assay for NADPH, NADP, NADH and NAD. In collaboration with Pak Chan at Stanford, Dr. Adams' lab demonstrated that DNA is a primary and early target of oxygen radicals during stroke and Parkinson's disease. DNA damage leads to apoptosis and necrosis. His lab demonstrated that DNA damage can be mitigated by treatment with nicotinamide, a precursor for NAD.

Dr. Adams's lab holds the patent for use of nicotinamide (vitamin B3) to treat stroke and other forms of neurodegeneration. He has written over 130 publications, six books and 60 abstracts.

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Selected Projects/Publications

Adams JD and Parker K (editors). Extracellular and intracellular signaling. Royal Society of Chemistry, scheduled for printing in 2011.

Garcia C and Adams JD. Healing with medicinal plants of the west - cultural and scientific basis for their use. Second Edition. Abedus Press. La Crescenta. 2009. 254 pages.

JD Adams and TF Woolf. Investigative agents for use in nuerodegenerative conditions. Burger's Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery, 6th edition, vol 5. D Abraham and J Andrako, eds. John Wiley and Sons, Inc, New York, in press.

JD Adams, LK Klaidman, ML Chang and J Yang. Brain oxidative stress - analytical chemistry and thermodynamics of glutathione and NADPH. Curr. Topics Med. Chem. 1 (6): 473-482 (2001).

LK Klaidman, SK Mukherjee and JD Adams. Oxidative changes in brain pyridine nucleotides and neuroprotection using nicotinamide. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1525: 136-148 (2001).