Won Chan Oh, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Dravet Syndrome (DS) is a severe childhood epilepsy that often resists standard treatments, leaving children at risk of cognitive damage and sudden death. Cannabidiol (CBD) was FDA-approved for DS in 2018, but we still don’t understand how it works in the brain, making it difficult to optimize dosing or combine it rationally with other medications. This project uses a mouse model of DS to uncover CBD’s mechanisms at the level of individual brain connections. We will examine how SCN1A mutations in our DS model disrupt the brain’s excitatory-inhibitory balance, how CBD corrects this, and how CBD can best be paired with other seizure medications. The goal is to transform CBD treatment from empirical practice into precise, evidence-based therapy for children with drug-resistant epilepsy.