Dr. David E. Olson Honored with 2021 Innovator of the Year Award

  • by AJ Cheline

 

The University of California, Davis named the recipients of the 2021 Chancellor’s Innovation Awards. The awards recognize faculty, project teams and community partners for their work, dedication and success in improving the lives of others and addressing the needs of our global society through innovative solutions. David E. Olson, an associate professor affiliated with the Center for Neuroscience was among those recognized. 

“UC Davis research not only unlocks key insights to understand the world’s most critical challenges, it generates innovative solutions with tremendous benefits to our society through new products, services, education and art,” Chancellor Gary S. May said. “I would like to congratulate the recipients of our innovation awards for their success in reaching beyond what is expected — even beyond what is imagined by others — to provide solutions addressing important needs.”

The awards comprise Innovator of the Year, Innovative Community Partner and Lifetime Achievement in Innovation. The program is managed by the Office of Research.

“Researchers across the campus work tirelessly throughout their careers to develop solutions that advance quality of life and drive economic growth,” said Prasant Mohapatra, vice chancellor for Research at UC Davis. “These awards honor the significance of their work and the valuable contribution to our society.”

David Olson
David E. Olson, Ph.D.

Innovator of the Year

The Innovator of the Year awards recognize individual faculty, staff or teams whose innovative research or accomplishments have made a measurable societal impact in the preceding year, or whose activities have achieved important milestones and present very strong potential for societal impact. Recipients receive $10,000 to apply to their research or community engagement efforts.

David Olson’s research focuses on harnessing neuroplasticity to treat neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. He has identified a new class of medicines called psychoplastogens that rewire the brain to heal damaged neural circuits.

Olson’s team was the first to demonstrate that psychedelic compounds like LSD, MDMA, and ibogaine are particularly effective psychoplastogens, providing a possible explanation for why these compounds produce sustained therapeutic effects after only a single administration. While psychedelic drugs have been shown to hold great promise for treating a variety of brain disorders, they can have serious side effects including hallucinations, cardiac toxicity and abuse liability.

To address these drawbacks, Olson engineered several safer, non-hallucinogenic variants which include analogs of psilocybin, ibogaine and MDMA. These next-generation psychoplastogens produce long-lasting therapeutic effects without the liabilities associated with psychedelics.

This work led to Olson to co-found Delix Therapeutics — a company dedicated to using neuroplasticity-promoting small molecules to treat a variety of brain disorders. The company has licensed several patents developed in Olson’s lab and raised over $15 million in venture capital funds. By expanding patient access to psychoplastogenic medicines, Olson hopes to have a broad and lasting impact on mental health.

About the awards program

The UC Davis Chancellor’s Innovation Awards program was established in 2016 to celebrate the university’s innovative contributions to the regional and global community. The program is run by Venture Catalyst, a unit within the Innovation and Technology Commercialization division of the Office of Research.

The call for nominations for this year’s award was issued in February 2021.

Nominations were reviewed by a selection committee consisting of past recipients, representatives from the Office of Research, external partners and delegates named by the deans of various UC Davis schools and colleges. Committee members rated each nomination based on a predetermined protocol evaluating the uniqueness of the innovation(s) and their potential societal impact. Recommendations from the committee were then submitted to the chancellor and provost and executive vice chancellor, and vice chancellor of research for final approval.

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This story was adapted from a story for the UC Davis newsroom.