Marco Pravetoni, PhD

Principal Investigator

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About

Marco Pravetoni is the Rick L. Seaver Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, and Director of a Center for Medication Development for Substance Use Disorders and Overdose. Prior to joining the University of Washington, Marco was a Tenured Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, MN. He earned a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Minnesota in 2008. His NIH-funded research program focuses on the pre-clinical and clinical development of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and small molecules to treat opioid use disorders and reduce fatal overdoses. Other interests include biologics targeting chemical and biological threats.

Research Areas

  • Drug discovery
  • Biomarkers
  • Molecular basis of disease
  • Neurobiology and behavior
  • Protein engineering
  • Translation
  • Entrepreneurship

Research Statement

Current medications are not always sufficient to treat substance use disorders and prevent or reverse drug overdoses. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the United States, with ~100,000 fatal overdoses occurring each year. In response to this public health crisis, Dr. Pravetoni is developing novel therapeutics such as vaccines, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and other biologics to treat and prevent substance use disorders and overdose. Dr. Pravetoni’s team has identified promising vaccines against heroin, oxycodone, fentanyl, and their derivatives or combinations. His team is currently testing a lead oxycodone vaccine in the first-in-human Phase I clinical trial, and they are pursuing clinical testing of other vaccine and mAb against other opioids of interest. To accelerate discoveries, the multidisciplinary group is leveraging a variety of technologies such as rational vaccine design, protein engineering, adjuvants, nanotechnology, formulations, immunomodulators, cellular and molecular mechanisms of efficacy, biomarkers, sequencing, PK/PD modeling, AI/ML tools, and public private partnerships with industry. These strategies and concepts are also applied to other chemical and biological threats of public health and defense interest.

News and Media

International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM)

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