Damon Runyon Researchers

Dr. Zhang aims to understand how the sensory organ called Area Postrema (AP) detects and generates nausea. Intense and protracted nausea and vomiting are major side effects of cancer therapy, with current anti-emetic drugs demonstrating only limited efficacy. She will use molecular and genetic approaches to disentangle the cellular diversity of the AP organ while identifying potential molecular detectors for nausea stimuli. She plans to focus on a particular group of neurons in AP that are potentially involved in nausea responses and use techniques to map and manipulate this circuit to reveal the neuronal substrates for nausea sensation in the brain. This project will advance our basic understanding of how nausea-inducing stimuli are detected and processed, and may lay the foundation for developing new treatment strategies.