Barbara Slusher PhD, MAS

Professor of Neurology (primary), Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Medicine and Oncology; Director, JHU NIMH Therapeutic Core; Director, Johns Hopkins Drug Discovery; Adjunct Professor, Czech Academy of Sciences

bslusher@jhmi.edu
Telephone Number: 410-614-0662
Fax Number: 410-614-0659

The Brain Science Institute
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
855 North Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21205
Room: 278 Rangos Building
Lab Page
Areas of Research
Neurobiology of Disease

Graduate Program Affiliations

Neuroscience Training Program

Drug Discovery in the Nervous System

Before joining Johns Hopkins in 2010, Dr. Slusher spent 18 years in the pharmaceutical industry, including several years at the level of Senior Vice President of Research and Translational Development. She has extensive experience in drug discovery through early clinical development and was involved in the successful development, launch and/or post marketing support of several branded medicines including SeroquelTM, AloxiTM, DacogenTM, LucedraTM

At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Slusher leads the largest integrated drug discovery program on campus with a veteran team of medicinal chemists, assay developers, pharmacologists, toxicologists, and pharmacokinetics/drug metabolism experts. The team is engaged in identifying novel drug targets arising from the faculty’s research and translating them into new drug therapies for clinical development. 

Dr. Slusher has published over 170 scientific articles and is the inventor on 75 patents and applications. She has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international scientific meetings and has served on the board or as a scientific consultant of multiple biotechnology companies. She is a co-founder of Cerecor, a CNS-focused biopharma company in Baltimore (www.cerecor.com/) and recently founded Dracen Pharmaceuticals focused on immuno-metabolism. She also founded and is leading the first-ever International Consortium of Academic Drug Discovery (www.addconsortium.orgwith over 140 university-led translational centers and 1500 members in an effort to coordinate and enhance academic drug discovery efforts.


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