Symposium 19: Neurotransmitter Transporters: Structure, Function and Role in Human Disease
Tracks
Track 3
| Thursday, July 16, 2026 |
| 11:15 AM - 1:15 PM |
Details
Extracellular concentrations of neurotransmitters are regulated by transporter proteins, the dysfunction of which can trigger severe medical disorders (e.g. epilepsy, Parkinson’s, psychiatric and substance use disorders). Dr. Daws will discuss organic cation transporter 3 as a novel target for development of therapeutics for alcohol and amphetamine-type substance use disorders. Dr. Gether will describe genetic mouse models of dopamine transporter disease-linked mutants and how genetically encoded biosensors, fiber photometry, machine learning and pharmacological manipulations can be used to dissect pathobiological mechanisms. Dr. Sucic will describe how small molecules and pharmacochaperoning can rescue misfolded disease variants of human dopamine, creatine and GABA transporters. Dr. Sauer will present his cutting-edge research on the sodium/imino-acid transporter 1 and propose a model for its preference of secondary amino acids and transport cycle. Dr. Cater will describe how sophisticated membrane protein biochemistry, cryo-EM and biophysics collectively unravel the molecular mechanisms of transport at the blood-brain barrier.
Speaker
Assoc Prof Sonja Sucic
Medical University of Vienna
Functional rescue of GABA transporter 1 disease variants by pharmacochaperoning
Biography
Sonja currently works as Associate Professor at the Institute of Pharmacology, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. She received both her Undergraduate Degree with First Class Honours (in Biotechnology and Drug Design and Development), and her PhD (in Pharmacology), from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Her research focuses on rare, loss-of-function disease variants in neurotransmitter transporters of the solute carrier 6 (SLC6) protein superfamily. Sonja and her team investigate both the physiological repercussions and the underlying molecular basis (e.g. structural and/or protein folding/trafficking defects) of SLC6 pathogenic mutations. Dozens of such mutants have recently been linked to severe, and as yet untreatable, neurological disorders in children, e.g. epilepsy, infantile/juvenile parkinsonism-dystonia & intellectual disability. The main objective of this work is to discover new therapeutic avenues, needed for the functional rescue of these disease variants, by means of pharmacochaperoning using small molecules, known as chemical and pharmacological chaperones/allosteric modulators.
David Sauer, PhD, PI
Centre for Medicines Discovery, University of Oxford
Role of SIT1 (SLC6A20) in transporting proline and neurotransmitters
Biography
David Sauer is a biophysicist and Principal Investigator at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Medicines Discovery, focusing on the structure and function of membrane channels and transporters. He completed his PhD degree with Youxing Jiang at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, studying potassium channel structure and ion selectivity. This was followed by postdoctoral training with Da-Neng Wang at New York University School of Medicine, describing the structure, transport mechanism, and chemical inhibition of SLC13/DASS membrane transporters. Since joining Oxford in 2021, David has led a group studying membrane proteins' function, pathogenesis, and chemical targeting by small molecules. His team’s results have revealed the amino acid import by SIT1 and CAT1, the reaction mechanism and inhibition of the ceramide synthase CerS6, and the pathogenic mechanisms of the muscle-type Acetylcholine Receptor nAChR.
Session chair
Lynette Daws
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Sonja Sucic
Medical University of Vienna
