UWF professor lands $543K NIH grant to study dopamine's role in immune response

A University of West Florida researcher has secured federal funding to investigate how dopamine affects the body's inflammatory response, with potential applications for treating diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer's.

Dr. Peter Cavnar, associate dean and associate professor at UWF's Hal Marcus College of Science and Engineering, received a $543,756 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences over four years. The award will support research exploring how dopamine and dopamine receptors regulate neutrophils — the most common type of white blood cell in the immune system — and their role in controlling inflammation.

Neutrophils serve as the immune system's first line of defense against infection, but when overactivated, they can damage tissue and contribute to autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases. Cavnar's team hopes that understanding dopamine's influence on neutrophil behavior could lead to new treatments for conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and Alzheimer's disease. Dopamine-targeting drugs already treat a range of conditions from Parkinson's disease to schizophrenia, but their effects on the immune system remain poorly understood.

The grant, formally titled a Support for Undergraduate Research Excellence (SuRE) award, is designed to build research capacity by involving undergraduate students as active participants rather than observers. Cavnar emphasized that UWF's research strength lies in student-driven investigation, with undergraduates receiving direct financial support to work as genuine collaborators on original scientific questions.