Robert Dickinson

BIOGRAPHY

I am a lecturer in the Department of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine & Intensive Care, based at the South Kensington Campus. I joined the department in 2002. I have been involved in research on mechanisms of general anaesthesia for 19 years. I studied at the University of Glasgow, graduating with a BSc (Hons) in 1986 before coming to Imperial College to study for a PhD. My research interests are in molecular mechanisms of general anaesthetic action at the synaptic and cellular level. I use a variety of biophysical techniques to study the molecular actions of general anaesthetics; these include patch-clamp electrophysiology, molecular biology and cell culture.

Recent projects include the effects of general anaesthetics on synaptic transmission in cultured hippocampal neurons, the effects of general anaesthetics on gamma (40Hz) oscillations and investigations of the molecular targets of the anaesthetic inert gas xenon.

How the "inert" gas xenon causes general anaesthesia has, until recently, been a mystery. However, studies in our laboratory have shown that xenon inhibits the NMDA subtype of glutamate receptor. NMDA receptors are membrane proteins with an integral cation-selective ion-channel. NMDA receptors play novel roles in synaptic transmission and synaptic plasticity; they also play a key role in pathological conditions such as ischemia, stroke and tumour growth. Inhibition of NMDA receptors by xenon may explain certain characteristics of xenon's unique pharmacological profile, e.g. profound analgesia, neuroprotection. The precise molecular mechanism by which xenon inhibits the NMDA receptor remains to be elucidated. Currently I am focussing on identifying the nature of the interactions of xenon with the NMDA receptor.


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