Opioid and other drug overdoses resulted in more than 70,000 deaths in the US in 2017. While this issue has justifiably garnered a great deal of public attention, it is important not to forget a much more insidious and prolific killer: smoking. Cigarette smoking contributes to almost half a million deaths each year, including 40,000 from passive smoke exposure, alone. Mary Jeanne Kallman has spent much of her career in industry – teaching, managing, and directing research – but nicotine dependence and experimental treatment thereof is an issue that she has managed to revisit repeatedly in her career. Her major contributions to the field include quantitation of nicotine withdrawal and assessment of various experimental treatments of nicotine dependence using preclinical models. Nicotine (or any other drug’s) withdrawal is often measured via application of a functional observational battery – a series of tests which are mandated by regulators. However, the test is often insensitive to subtle withdrawal signs and has components requiring substantial subjective input, and hence, bias. One commonality in drug withdrawal is anxiety, and Mary Jeanne and collaborators made extensive, successful use of acoustic startle to quantify the magnitude of nicotine and other drugs’ dependence properties, and reversal thereof. Like many of us who have behavioral pharmacology labs in industry, when new high specificity and affinity ligands arrive, we like to test them in model systems that we care about, such as drug reinforcement and dependence. As such, Mary Jeanne was the first to demonstrate the potential efficacy of CCK-B antagonists, 5-HT1a antagonists, and mGLUR2 agonists in nicotine dependence. Any of these appear worthy of clinical testing. Mary Jeanne earned a PhD from the University of Georgia in Neuroscience and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was a tenured Associate Professor and Director of the PhD Experimental Graduate Program at the University of Mississippi for 9 years. She worked for Lilly Research Labs for 17 years as the Group Leader for Safety Pharmacology in their Toxicology Group where she provided drug development solutions in rodents, primates and dogs as needed. She also worked for Covance Laboratories, a large CRO, as the Global Director of Neuroscience and she is currently managing a consulting business which provides input on CNS issue resolution and abuse liability strategies for drugs in development. Mary Jeanne holds diplomate status in the Safety Pharmacology Society and she has held several professional leadership positions including President of the Safety Pharmacology Society, Leader of the Scientific Liaison Coalition (SLC) of SOT, and co-leader of the Cross- Company Abuse Liability Council (CCALC). She frequently publishes scientific papers, book chapters, and presents on various CNS issues. She has been a member of CPDD since 2003. By Thomas Hudzik, Ph.D., Animals in Research Committee Member.
