Olivier Civelli is a molecular biologist, a researcher in the field of neuropharmacology and an educator. He is the Eric L. and Lila D. Nelson Professor of Neuropharmacology at University of California, Irvine. He is also a Professor in the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology at University of California, Irvine. He is most known for his work in advancing understanding of neurotransmission and his impact on drug discovery.
Civelli's research is focused on understanding brain function and the identification and study of novel molecules involved in brain activity. He was the first to decipher the structure of a dopamine receptor, the D2 receptor, central to neurobiology. He also uncovered the diversity of dopamine receptor family, identifying the D1 and D5 receptors and discovered the D4 receptor, of importance in psychiatry. Civelli then invented the strategy that uses orphan receptors to discover new neurotransmitters referred to as reverse pharmacology. Utilizing this strategy, he was the first to identify a novel neuropeptide, orphanin FQ (Nociceptin) in 1995, which he showed to regulate anxiety. He has written over 450 papers and holds 30 patents.
In 2004, Nature Drug Discovery recognized him as one of the world's 20 leading experts on GPCR research and The Scientist featured him in Hooked on a Hunt in 2008. In 2015, he was awarded the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative for Visiting Scientists.
Early life and education
Civelli was born in Fribourg, Switzerland. He received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The research for his thesis was done at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris under the supervision of Klaus Scherrer. He then worked as postdoctoral fellow on the discovery of opioid peptide precursors at the University of Oregon, Eugene, with Edward Herbert.
Career
In 1985, Civelli joined the Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, as a research assistant professor, and was a founding member of the Vollum Institute. It is there that he cloned the dopamine receptors and discovered their diversity.
Civelli joined F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel in 1992 as vice president and developed the reverse pharmacology approach that allowed him to discover novel neuropeptides. He returned to academia as the Eric L. and Lila D. Nelson professor of neuropharmacology at the University of California, Irvine in 1996. From 2012 to 2019, he was the Chair of Department of Pharmacology at UC Irvine.
Research and work
Civelli's research is focused on understanding brain function and the identification and study of novel molecules involved in brain activity. He has conducted research in the area of molecular psychiatry, G protein-coupled receptors, neuropeptides, orphan receptors, novel neurotransmitters, dopamine receptors, orphanin FQ/nociceptin, MCH, and traditional Chinese medicines.
In the mid-1980s, Civelli’s research pioneered the identification of new neurotransmitter receptors by applying the homology screening approach to G-protein coupled receptors, an approach which ultimately led to cloning of most of the G protein-coupled receptor families. This development led Civelli to be the first to characterize structurally a dopamine receptor, the D2 receptor. This discovery opened the search for additional dopamine receptors, and, in the subsequent years, Civelli discovered and described the unexpected diversity of dopamine receptors by successively cloning the D1, D4 and D5 receptors. His discovery of the D4 receptor suggested that this receptor may have a particular affinity for the atypical neuroleptic clozapine. Civelli's research in this period did not focus solely on dopamine receptors; he also discovered the adenosine A3 receptor.