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Benjamin Weiss | |
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| Born | January 26, 1937 The Bronx, New York City, NY, USA |
| Alma mater | Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (Now called University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) |
| Known for | Neuropharmacology; Phosphodiesterase inhibition |
| Spouse | Joyce Zelnick (m. 1959) |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | , National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
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Benjamin Weiss (January 26, 1937) is an American neuropharmacologist, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine. He is best known for his work with cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases. He was the first to propose, based on his experimental work, that selective inhibition of phosphodiesterases which are expressed differentially in all tissues, could be used as a target for drug development. His work is the basis for many marketed and developmental human drugs that selectively inhibit cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases.
His investigations on the modulation of adrenergic responses in the pineal gland have resulted in the formation of new concepts that may explain the phenomena of drug tolerance and drug hypersensitivity. He and his laboratory were also instrumental in the development of antisense oligonucleotides and antisense RNA as pharmacological tools to study calmodulin and dopamine receptors, and as pharmacological agents for antisense therapy in brain and other tissue.