Pharmacology and Physiology

Dr. Bart Ford is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, where he directs the Behavioral Immunology Lab of Tulsa (BILT), and an Affiliate Investigator with the OU-Tulsa Integrative Immunology Center. He earned his Ph.D. in Behavioral Immunology from the University of Tulsa, training in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Savitz at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research, where he also completed postdoctoral work.

Dr. Ford’s current research examines how childhood adversity becomes biologically embedded, driving long-term changes in immune function and gene expression that shape health across the lifespan. A central line of this work focuses on the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA), a pattern of immune gene regulation linked to chronic stress, to understand how early-life experiences influence inflammatory signaling, vaccine responses, and disease risk well into adulthood. This research draws on genomic and epigenomic approaches, including gene expression profiling and chromatin accessibility analysis, developed in part through specialized training in social genomics.

In ongoing collaborative work, Dr. Ford continues to study how cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection accelerates immune aging and contributes to the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder, including effects on brain structure and immune function.

Dr. Ford’s research has been supported by funding from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other federal and foundation sources. He is active in the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society, where he chairs the Access and Opportunity Committee, and mentors graduate students and postdoctoral trainees in his lab.

Research Interests: Conserved transcriptional response to adversity · Childhood adversity & immune function · Social genomics · Psychoneuroimmunology · Cytomegalovirus & immune aging · Major depressive disorder

Swarup Mitra, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences (OSU-CHS) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dr. Mitra's research focus on the neurobiology of substance use, stress-related disorders, chronic pain, neurodevelopmental outcomes, and glial cell biology, with a particular interest in how early-life experiences and environmental exposures shape brain function across the lifespan. Dr. Mitra's research integrates molecular, cellular, and behavioral neuroscience approaches to investigate the mechanisms through which opioids, stress, inflammation, and developmental adversity alter neural circuits and neuroimmune signaling. His work has contributed to understanding the roles of oligodendrocytes, microglia, astrocytes, mitochondrial function, and epigenetic regulation in neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. He is also actively involved in studying the long-term consequences of perinatal opioid exposure and early-life stress, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets for substance use, pain, and stress-related brain dysfunction.

W. Kyle Simmons, Ph.D., is a Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and Director of the OSU Biomedical Imaging Center.  In 2026 he was appointed the Roger Hardesty Chair in Clinical Neuroscience at OSU-CHS.  He earned his Ph.D. at Emory University, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the NIMH Intramural Research Program, and has held research positions in both academia and industry. For more than two decades, his research has combined neuroimaging, psychophysiology, and assays of endocrine, metabolic, and immune signaling to investigate the biological determinants of depression, obesity, eating disorders, and substance use disorders. His current work focuses on developing new therapeutics for addiction, particularly GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gRjmf_AAAAAJ&hl=en