Office of University Communications 

Biology professor receives grant for migraine drug research

Date: March 6, 2008

Durham’s work will focus on understanding how the drug dihydroergotamine, or DHE, helps alleviate the symptoms of common migraine headache. While early formations of DHE could effectively stop migraine attacks, these formulations were linked to many unwanted side effects, including nausea and leg cramping. Durham hopes that his research on a novel inhaled formulation of DHE will help explain the mechanism by which this new drug can reduce a patient’s migraines without causing the severe side effects.

“Studies like this are important for a drug to receive FDA approval,” said Durham. “This project will hopefully provide unique insight into how this drug functions to abort migraine headaches and thus, may help make available an effective new therapy for migraine sufferers.”

Durham notes that Missouri State students will also benefit from the research project. “This award will allow us to have both graduate and undergraduate students gain hands-on experience on this novel, cutting-edge project.”

Dr. Arlen Diamond, director of broadcast services, recently received an award of $8,900 to fund the “Missouri Parent Information Resource Center” project.

The Missouri Parent Information Resource Center is a broad community partnership that works to help parents understand how to actively engage in their child’s education. The Resource Center is able to answer any questions a parent may have about the No Child Left Behind Act and how it effects their child’s education.

With the award, Missouri State will provide a series of call-in programs on Ozarks Public Television that will allow parents to ask questions to experts on-air about The No Child Left Behind Act and any other questions they may have about the education system.

“We are very excited about the project,” said Diamond. “It is a natural fit with our educational children’s programming that we provide, and we hope that the information that is shared in the broadcasts will help parents gain a better understanding of how they can become active in their child’s education.”

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Dr. Neal Lopinot, director of the Center of Archaeological Research at Missouri State University, published an article in the October 2007 issue of American Antiquity.

The article details an experiment by Lopinot and Jack Ray, term research instructor for the Center of Archaeological Research, which led them to replicate some modified stones found in very old deposits at Big Eddy, an archaeological site on the Sac River in southwest Missouri.

Though the modification of the stones from Big Eddy appeared to represent human activity, they were found in deposits that predate the period when it is traditionally believed that humans arrived in the New World.

To test these artifacts, Lopinot and Ray took flint stones from the site and had three adult elephants at the Dickerson Park Zoo walk over them repeatedly. The resulting chips were very similar to those found at Big Eddy.

“Although there are a few other artifacts from these early deposits at Big Eddy that are raising some eyebrows in the professional community, the experiment with elephants demonstrated that some items from Big Eddy and other early sites that might appear to represent human-produced items or artifacts may have actually resulted from the trampling of mastodons and other large mammals walking along the river in search of food or water,” said Lopinot.