H. Steve White

About

H. Steve White, RpH, Ph.D, earned his baccalaureate degree in Pharmacy and a M.S. in Pharmacology at Idaho State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Utah where he joined the College of Pharmacy faculty in 1986 and advanced through the academic ranks. Before joining the University of Washington School of Pharmacy as Chair of the Department of Pharmacy, White was the principal investigator and scientific director of the NIH-sponsored Anticonvulsant Drug Development (ADD) Program, established in 1975 to identify novel anticonvulsant drugs using established animal seizure and epilepsy models. His research focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to the initiation, propagation, and amelioration of seizure activity, including early discovery of anti-seizure drugs, animal seizure and epilepsy models for drug discovery, pharmaco-resistant epilepsy, and the impact of adherence on seizure control. White has received significant research funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the NIH, and has published over 170 original papers on the mechanism of action and pharmacology of antiepileptic drugs. He has served as Research Director of CURE, the largest non-governmental provider of epilepsy research funding, and continues to serve as a Research Advisor to its team-science initiatives. White has been actively engaged as a mentor for neuroscientists and epilepsy educators, and is frequently invited to…

Research topics

• Medicine
• Psychiatry
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Intensive care medicine
• Pharmacology
• Anesthesia
• Chemistry
• Internal medicine
• Neuroscience

Selected publications

• Drug resistance in epilepsy

  The Lancet Neurology · 2023 · 243 citations

  PublisherDOI

• Progress report on new antiepileptic drugs: A summary of the Fifteenth Eilat Conference on New Antiepileptic Drugs and Devices (EILAT XV). I. Drugs in preclinical and early clinical development

  Epilepsia · 2020 · 144 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Since 1992, the Eilat Conferences have provided a forum for all stakeholders in the epilepsy community to appraise the latest data on new antiepileptic drugs and emergency seizure treatments, including, in recent years, updates on progress with the development of novel monitoring and therapeutic devices. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fifteenth Eilat Conference on New Antiepileptic Drugs and Devices (EILAT XV) was held as a fully virtual conference on July 27-30, 2020 for the sessions on…

  DOI

• New GABA-Targeting Therapies for the Treatment of Seizures and Epilepsy: I. Role of GABA as a Modulator of Seizure Activity and Recently Approved Medications Acting on the GABA System

  CNS Drugs · 2023-08-21 · 96 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the most prevalent inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain and has been found to play an important role in the pathogenesis or the expression of many neurological diseases, including epilepsy. Although GABA can act on different receptor subtypes, the component of the GABA system that is most critical to modulation of seizure activity is the GABAA-receptor-chloride (Cl−) channel complex, which controls the movement of Cl− ions across the neuronal membrane.…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cenobamate (XCOPRI): Can preclinical and clinical evidence provide insight into its mechanism of action?

  Epilepsia · 2020 · 78 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  modulators. This distinction, in light of its proposed mechanism(s) of action, provides insight into the impressive clinical efficacy of CBM in the adult patient with focal onset epilepsy. The results of this comparative reverse translational analysis suggest that CBM is a mechanistically distinct ASM that offers an important advancement in drug development for treatment of therapy-resistant epilepsy.

  DOI

• New GABA-Targeting Therapies for the Treatment of Seizures and Epilepsy: II. Treatments in Clinical Development

  CNS Drugs · 2023-08-21 · 49 citations

  reviewOpen access

  The inhibitory neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) plays an important role in the modulation of neuronal excitability, and a disruption of GABAergic transmission contributes to the pathogenesis of some seizure disorders. Although many currently available antiseizure medications do act at least in part by potentiating GABAergic transmission, there is an opportunity for further research aimed at developing more innovative GABA-targeting therapies. The present article summarises available e…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01NS065434

  NIH · $887k · 2015

• NIH Grant R21NS049624

  NIH · $380k · 2008

• Development of a galanin-based therapy for the treatment of refractory epilepsy

  NIH · $3.4M · 2010–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Vivienne Shen

  Lundbeck (United States)

  83 shared

• David M. Tworek

  83 shared

• James C. Cloyd

  83 shared

• Guangbin Peng

  Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

  83 shared

• Jouko Isojärvi

  83 shared

• Raman Sankar

  82 shared

• Georgia Montouris

  Boston University

  82 shared

• Barry E. Gidal

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  81 shared

Labs

• Center for Epilepsy Drug Discovery (CEDD)PI

Education

• Other, Pharmacy

  not specified

• M.S., Pharmacology

  not specified

• Ph.D., Pharmacology

  not specified

Awards & honors

• Honorary Doctor of Science from The University of Copenhagen…
• 2014 recipient of the Epilepsy Foundation's Lifetime Acceler…

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Jing Lih-153
• Jan Hansenh-130
• Sean D. Sullivanh-97