Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D.,
serves as the University's vice chancellor for research
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Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., serves as the University's vice chancellor for research |
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Encouraging,
supporting research A distinguished scientist, Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., also serves the University as vice chancellor for research By Jim Dryden He spent his childhood about a mile and a half from one of the most awe-inspiring sites in the world. Now, he oversees the awe-inspiring research enterprise that distinguishes Washington University.
"I grew up in Niagara Falls, New York," said Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., vice chancellor for research and professor of neuropharmacology in psychiatry in the School of Medicine. "On Sunday mornings in particular, with the windows open, you could hear the rushing of 'the falls.' But we avoided it because it was kind of a 'touristy' place, so I probably didn't see it more than about once a year." Cicero's Niagara Falls was a thriving city of about 140,000 people. Now, the town is more of a bedroom community to Buffalo and only a shadow of its former self. Companies that located in the town used the falls to generate cheap electrical power, but most moved elsewhere to pursue cheap labor. Unlike Niagara Falls, Cicero says the University is thriving, and he's a big part of that. As vice chancellor for research, he oversees the University's technology transfer efforts. It's a long way from what he set out to do. "Before I became vice chancellor for research, I didn't really know what technology transfer was," he confessed. "I knew it had something to do with the commercialization of intellectual property, but I'd never done anything like it." In fact, when he first got into this line of work, his only goal was to pursue basic research. "My father, Fiori, worked in a factory as a steelworker, with all of the ups and downs that go into that," Cicero recalled. "And he hated his job! That convinced me to pursue something that I enjoyed because getting paid for being miserable didn't seem like a very good trade-off to me." Go West, young man Cicero attended Villanova University in Philadelphia. He started in pre-med but finished with a degree in psychology. In between, he flirted with political science and minored in history. The courses he enjoyed most were those that posed questions that had no pat answers. Eventually, he became intrigued by the brain, and after completing his undergraduate work, he packed his bags for West Lafayette, Ind., and Purdue University, where he worked in the fledgling field of neuropharmacology.
They didn't intend to stay in the Midwest, but then came an opportunity at Washington University for a postdoctoral fellowship. That was 1968, and he has never left. He had started looking for a job elsewhere as his fellowship was ending, but Eli Robins, M.D., head of the Department of Psychiatry, urged him to stay. "He told me he was going to appoint me as an instructor," Cicero recalled with a smile. "But the next day, Eli called me and said, 'What the hell is the matter with you? Don't you know how to negotiate? Your CV demands that you be an assistant professor, not an instructor! You've got to start standing up for yourself!'" Cicero officially joined the faculty in 1970 as an assistant professor in the psychiatry department. Drug abuse research Most of Cicero's research at Purdue had involved using animal models to look at brain areas involved in the reward pathways that motivate behaviors. That work led him into studies of drug abuse, and that became the primary theme of his research career. The area fascinates him because of the way drugs seem to permanently alter the brain. "In a drug addict, there are changes in the brain that appear to be permanent," he explained. "No matter how long you wait, there seems to be some permanent preference for drug use. Even if you have a 10- or 15-year delay, if you reinitiate the behavior, you can become addicted again, only at a much more rapid pace and at much lower doses." One of Cicero's first important discoveries involved the effect of drug use on sex hormones. In studies of the effects of chronic drug use, particularly narcotics, on receptors involved in hormone release, he was looking at the secondary sex organs in male rats -- the seminal vesicles and the prostate -- because they were rich in a type of receptor he hoped to study. But after administering narcotic drugs to the rats, Cicero had a difficult time even finding the tissues he hoped to study. They were about a quarter the size of the secondary sex organs in normal rats. It turned out that the narcotic drugs -- as well as other abused substances, such as alcohol --were depressing testosterone levels in the rats. "It was a totally accidental finding, but it became the pursuit of my career," he said. "From that discovery, we were able to connect the dots, and from these studies it was ultimately learned that endogenous opioid peptides were integrally involved in the regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, a system that helps explain how the brain controls and interacts with hormones throughout the body." Animal studies Cicero does most of his research in animals because there are no social and demographic variables that contribute to drug use in humans. Studying a drug's effects in animals allows him to concentrate on solely biological factors. In recent research, for example, he has identified major differences in how drugs affect male vs. female rats. "It's the sort of study that is virtually impossible in human subjects," he said. "There are just too many social stereotypes and expectations that have to be filtered out." Over the years, his work on the biological factors involved in drug abuse has landed Cicero on many committees and study groups that look at the impact of drug use and study various drugs to determine their abuse potential.
Because Cicero was his department's primary user of lab rats, he ended up in charge of the psychiatry animal facility. Later, when the School of Medicine decided to centralize and upgrade its animal program, Cicero got the call. He organized faculty committees, spoke with architects, got input from veterinarians and others and eventually oversaw the consolidation of the school's 30-35 animal facilities into two buildings that became "state-of-the-art" facilities. "When he first became dean, Bill Peck and I met, and he was dedicated to making this a first-rate program," Cicero said. "I think that's what we did." Research vice chancellor Cicero's success in organizing faculty and using their input to design the animal program made him a front-runner when the post of vice chancellor for research was created. "Research truly is one of the most regulated industries in the United States," he said. "There are animal issues, human-studies issues, the potential for conflict of interest. My job is to make sure we are in full compliance with the regulations in such a way that we don't interfere with our core mission, and that is letting our investigators do their research." As he did when organizing the animal-care program, Cicero continues to rely on multiple faculty and administrative committees. They look at regulations and develop strategies to ensure that the University research effort is in compliance. The other part of the job involves making sure that promising new research has a life beyond the lab. "Ted Cicero is a valued colleague who has greatly enhanced the University's efforts to bring the benefits of research to society," said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. "He is a distinguished research scientist himself and has an excellent grasp of the importance of technology transfer and the present and future opportunities of the modern research university." |
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