Ken E. McCarson, PhD

Professional Background

Kenneth E. McCarson, Ph.D. is a Professor with Tenure in the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Therapeutics at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a Scientist in the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, where he also serves as Director of the PreClinical Models Core and Rodent Behavior Facility.
Dr. McCarson received a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (B.Ch.E.) degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, followed by a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia. He then served as a research associate in Neurobiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, and subsequently joined the KUMC faculty in 1995.
Dr. McCarson’s medical and graduate educational responsibilities include topics such as Autonomic, Autacoid, Diabetes, and GI pharmacology, Neuroscience (Somatic sensation and pain), and quantification of receptor function and organismal responsiveness. He is the Director of the departmental Essentials of Pharmacology and Graduate Student Seminar courses, and has received the KUMC Ruth Bohan Teaching Professorship, KUMC Student Voice M2 Top Professor Award, and KU Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
Dr. McCarson's research has generated over 73 peer-reviewed papers and numerous reviews and book chapters. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and a variety of private foundations. He has served as a chartered member of the NIH NIDA-K Training and Career Development Review Committee and routinely serves as a reviewer for NIH Training, research, and center grant review panels.

• BChE, Chemical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta, GA
• PhD, Pharmacology (Major Advisor: Barry D. Goldstein, Ph.D.), Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia, Augusta, GA
• Post Doctoral Fellowship, Neurobiology (James E. Krause, Ph.D., Major Advisor), Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO

Research

Overview

Dr. McCarson’s research program examines the roles that gene expression of various neurotransmitters and their receptors play in the regulation of sensory function and has focused on the role of neurokinin (NK-1) receptors in chronic inflammatory pain. The number, affinity and coupling of spinal NK-1 receptors is altered during persistent pain. Studying the expression, coupling and trafficking of these receptors clarifies how their plasticity contributes to the central sensitization and the resulting hyperalgesia and allodynia that are hallmarks of chronic pain. Through collaborative studies, he has studied changes in function of several different G-protein coupled receptors (NPY, MOR) in the setting of persistent pain or other long-term activation states.
Areas of the brain involved in the regulation of affect (or mood) are affected by pain. Dr. McCarson’s studies have implicated hippocampal neurogenesis as an important mood-regulating process that can be regulated by environmental factors including persistent nociception. This research has shown that persisttent pain activates cellular and molecular mechanisms of depression and suggests that their common co-morbidity may have a fundamental neurological foundation.
Projects in Dr. McCarson’s laboratory also investigate gender-related differences in pain sensation. His results show that estrogen modifies the expression of NK-1 and BDNF genes in pain pathways as well as in higher brain centers associated with emotions and mood. His research explores sites and mechanisms of estrogens’ actions in the nervous system that may underlie how men and women sense pain differently, and how estrogens may exacerbate some pain syndromes. Collaborative projects have developed rodent behavioral models of migraine headache, which is much more prevalent in women than men; this migraine model has facilitated investigating the effects of environmental estrogens that can worsen migraine frequency or severity.
As the Director of the KUMC Rodent Behavior Facility, Dr. McCarson also makes ongoing contributions to exciting new projects that require detailed behavioral assessment of rats or mice. For example, he provides detailed analysis of gait and motor function in rodent models of spinal cord or brain injury to assess the impact of therapeutic interventions based on neural progenitor cells or brain-machine interface devices. Another collaborative project focuses on the development of mutant mouse models of undiagnosed genetic diseases that lead to intellectual or developmental disorders in humans.

• McCarson, K., E, Krause, J., E. 1994. NK-1 and NK-3 type tachykinin receptor mRNA expression in the rat spinal cord dorsal horn is increased during adjuvant or formalin-induced nociception.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 14 (2), 712-20
• Mogil, J., S, McCarson, K., E. 2000. Identifying pain genes: bottom-up and top-down approaches.. The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society, 1 (3 Suppl), 66-80
• Winter, M., K, McCarson, K., E. 2005. G-protein activation by neurokinin-1 receptors is dynamically regulated during persistent nociception.. The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, 315 (1), 214-21
• Duric, V, McCarson, K., E. 2006. Effects of analgesic or antidepressant drugs on pain- or stress-evoked hippocampal and spinal neurokinin-1 receptor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene expression in the rat.. The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, 319 (3), 1235-43
• Corder, G, Doolen, S, Donahue, R., R, Winter, M., K, Jutras, B., L, He, Y, Hu, X, Wieskopf, J., S, Mogil, J., S, Storm, D., R, Wang, Z., J, McCarson, K., E, Taylor, B., K. 2013. Constitutive μ-opioid receptor activity leads to long-term endogenous analgesia and dependence.. Science (New York, N.Y.), 341 (6152), 1394-9
• Krizsan-Agbas, D, Winter, M., K, Eggimann, L., S, Meriwether, J, Berman, N., E, Smith, P., G, McCarson, K., E. 2014. Gait analysis at multiple speeds reveals differential functional and structural outcomes in response to graded spinal cord injury.. Journal of neurotrauma, 31 (9), 846-56
• McCarson, K., E, Enna, S., J. 2014. GABA pharmacology: the search for analgesics.. Neurochemical research, 39 (10), 1948-63
• Vermeer, L., M, Gregory, E, Winter, M., K, McCarson, K., E, Berman, N., E. 2014. Exposure to bisphenol A exacerbates migraine-like behaviors in a multibehavior model of rat migraine.. Toxicological sciences : an official journal of the Society of Toxicology, 137 (2), 416-27
• McCarson, K., E, Winter, M., K, Abrahamson, D., R, Berman, N., E, Smith, P., G. 2018. Assessing complex movement behaviors in rodent models of neurological disorders.. Neurobiology of learning and memory
• McCarson, K., E. 2020. Strategies for Behaviorally Phenotyping the Transgenic Mouse.. Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.), 2066, 171-194