Larry Walker
Director Emeritus, National Center for Natural Products Research; Research Professor Emeritus, Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Professor Emeritus, Pharmacology; and Associate Director Emeritus for Basic Research University of Mississippi Ca
Biography
Larry Walker is now Director Emeritus of the National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR) at the University of Mississippi, where he has been a faculty member of the School of Pharmacy for 43 years. He also served two years (2021-2023 as Interim Director of the National Center for Cannabis Research and Education for the University, and from 2010-2016 as Associate Director for Basic Sciences (Oxford campus) of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s Cancer Center and Research Institute. He holds a pharmacy degree from Mercer University in Atlanta, and completed his Ph.D. in pharmacology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Following postdoctoral stints in pharmacology and physiology at the Bosch Institute for Clinical Pharmacology in Stuttgart, Germany, and at Dartmouth Medical School, he joined the faculty of the School of Pharmacy at Ole Miss in 1981.
He has worked for much of his career on natural products drug discovery, pharmacology, toxicology and drug metabolism. He has worked extensively on cannabis and cannabinoid pharmacology, the activity of natural products in cancer and infectious diseases, and on the pharmacology and toxicology of antimalarial drugs. Dr. Walker is a co-author of more than 230 papers in peer-reviewed journals in pharmacology, toxicology, and natural products discovery and development. He received the University’s second Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award in 2009, and the School of Pharmacy’s Researcher of the Year Award in 2003. He has served on numerous editorial boards and scientific review panels.
Education
B.A. Biology, Oglethorpe University (1972)
B.S. Pharmacy, Mercer University (1975)
Ph.D. Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University (1979)