Mary E. Abood

Mary E. Abood is a professor at the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Center for Substance Abuse Research, at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. Dr. Abood's laboratory is investigating recently discovered endogenous compounds called the endocannabinoids and their cellular receptors. The endocannabinoid system is thought to play a role in addiction, pain control, motor control, learning, and memory, as well as in regulating immune function and bone growth. Her lab has cloned the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors and identified some of the structural and concomitant functional features of these proteins. These efforts have led to the identification of GPR55 and GPR18 as two putative cannabinoid receptors. On July 2, 2015, Dr. Mary Abood was awarded the Mechoulam Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field at the 25th Annual Symposium of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. The Mechoulam award is given to a distinguished established scientist who has made continued meritorious, significant, and widely recognized contributions to cannabinoid and endocannabinoid research that have moved the discipline forward. Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, isolated and solved the structure of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (∆9-THC), the principal psychoactive component of cannabis, in 1964. In 1992, his group isolated the first endocannabinoid (anandamide, from the Sanskrit word for bliss).