Two UB Researchers Recognized by F1000Prime

Jian Feng, PhD, has been invited to join the service’s faculty of international experts as a reviewer, and a paper by senior author Zhen Yan, PhD, has been recommended as being of special significance by an F1000Prime evaluator.

Through the F1000Prime service, more than 5,800 top scientists and their associates select and evaluate the published papers they find most interesting and noteworthy in their respective fields.

In an average month, they review 1,500 papers culled from more than 3,500 journals in the life sciences and medicine—approximately the top 2 percent of all articles published in these research areas.

Their reviews are posted online for F1000Prime subscribers.

Feng will join F1000Prime’s Neurobiology of Disease and Regeneration Section.

“I feel honored to be invited to join this group of experts who are highly regarded by peers in the field,” he says.

Based primarily on the quality of his research, he was selected by two section heads: James O. McNamara, PhD, professor and chair of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center, and Fred H. Gage, PhD, Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.

Feng is engaged in stem cell research, seeking targeted therapies and ultimately the cause and a cure for Parkinson’s disease.

He says his F1000Prime position “not only recognizes our work on Parkinson’s disease, it also speaks to the high–quality research at UB’s School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.”

A paper by Yan’s group, published in Molecular Psychiatry, received a two-star (out of three) or “very good” recommendation from David J. Triggle, PhD, a member of F1000Prime’s Pharmacology & Drug Discovery faculty.

Triggle says this important, collaborative animal study “defines a critical role for the female sex hormone estradiol.”

The findings suggest that estrogen-like compounds, if they do not cause hormonal side effects, could help males respond better to stress.

“How human gender differences in response to stress link to the role of estrogen is of considerable interest,” notes Triggle, SUNY Distinguished Professor emeritus of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at UB.

The paper, “Estrogen Protects against the Detrimental Effects of Repeated Stress on Glutamatergic Transmission and Cognition,” has received worldwide media coverage, including mentions in the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

According to F1000Prime, researchers say they benefit from the service’s expert recommendations drawn from diverse sources, including many specialty journals.

The reviews also help make researchers aware of significant work in fields related to their own.

Reviewers are not paid, but they receive a free subscription to the service.