Joan Heller Brown is an American pharmacologist. She is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. She is known for fundamental contributions to the understanding of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) — molecules that span cell membranes, where they transmit messages between cells and their environments — and how GPCRs regulate cell growth and survival, in healthy and various disease states. Many therapeutic drugs work by influencing GPCRs, thus Heller Brown's discoveries have been crucial to their development.