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Bruce Hammock, a world-class scientist with worldwide impact, grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he collected insects and befriended and studied snakes, lizards, frogs, raccoons, possums, a deer and assorted other critters. 

“I’ve always loved the outdoors — canoeing, climbing and hiking,” said Hammock, recalling his time as a Boy Scout. “It is hard to say where science leads. I was lucky in having an inspirational scoutmaster. But as a kid growing up in Little Rock, I never dreamed of attending college, much less being elected to the National Academy of Sciences.”

But that call came in 1999, notifying Hammock he’d been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, or NAS.

“I had no idea I’d even been nominated,” said Hammock, a UC Davis distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Society. “‘Thrilled’ was my first thought, but probably like most, my second thought was: ‘So many people are more deserving.’ But NAS was set up in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln during the height of the Civil War for a good reason: to have experts in varying areas of science and technology who could provide balanced advice to the government.”

Hammock, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980 after five years at UC Riverside, earned a bachelor’s degree in entomology and chemistry from Louisiana State University. He received a doctorate in entomology and toxicology from UC Berkeley, and then served as a medical officer at the U.S. Army Academy of Health Sciences, where he developed a lifelong interest in controlling pain and inflammation. 

“I at first decided to major in forestry at LSU, but then I became interested in a forest insect outbreak, then insects, then pesticides…” Hammock recalled.

He is known for his expertise in chemistry, toxicology, biochemistry and entomology. He is specifically recognized for:

• His pioneering research, spanning 50 years, to alleviate inflammatory and neuropathic pain in humans and companion animals, extending from the fundamental studies he did on insect metamorphosis in the John Casida Lab at UC Berkeley.
• Founding the field of environmental immunoassay.

A focus on contaminated sites

For 38 years, he directed the UC Davis Superfund Basic Research Program, funded by the National Institutes of Environmental Health, or NIEHS. It supported 10 laboratories on campus before funding ended this month, he said. As the founder and director, he pioneered trans-disciplinary research across campus, engaging faculty in multiple colleges and schools “to transform the ways in which we prevent and clean up environmental contamination.” This included the fields of engineering, soil and water contamination, toxicology, biology, and analytical chemistry.

“When it was started as a toxic waste clean-up program, there was a small component for research to improve human and environmental safety from toxic waste,” Hammock said. “UC Davis was the first NIEHS superfund program funded in the nation and for decades it funded a collaborative program at UC Davis among environmental scientists, basic scientists and engineers to improve human and environmental health. This brought millions of dollars in research funding to UC Davis as well as training programs.”

During his UC Davis career, Hammock has brought in $200 million in grants to the university, which include the superfund grants. The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, has supported his research for 50 years, and in 2019, granted him a rare , which provided seven years of research funding to explore new innovations. This $6 million “outstanding investigator” federal grant funded his innovative and visionary environmental health research. The panel praised his pioneering work on inflammation, alleviating chronic pain and targeting cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and other health issues.

From insect metamorphosis to pain treatment

Earlier in his career, Hammock founded the field of environmental immunoassay, using antibodies and biosensors to monitor food and environmental safety, and human exposure to pesticides.

“Interest in this field continues with first advancing the use of monoclonal antibodies in environmental chemistry and human monitoring, and now recombinant nanobodies from llamas in diagnostics and now therapy,” Hammock writes in his biosketch. “A basic idea that insect hormones are regulated in part by control of degradation as well as biosynthesis contributed to the development of green pesticides. The same concept applied to mammals has led to a drug in human clinical trials to replace addictive opioids.”

It was while he was researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides as a doctoral student that he and fellow student Sarjeet Gill — now a distinguished professor emeritus at UC Riverside — co-discovered the target enzyme in mammals that regulates epoxy fatty acids, a human enzyme termed Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase, or sEH. A key regulatory enzyme involved in the metabolism of fatty acids, it regulates a new class of natural chemical mediators, which in turn regulates inflammation, blood pressure and pain.

“Basically, I began by trying to figure out how a key enzyme, epoxide hydrolase, degrades a caterpillar's juvenile hormone, leading to metamorphosis from the larval stage to the adult insect,” Hammock said. He asked himself: “Does the enzyme occur in plants? Does it occur in mammals?” It does, and particularly as the soluble epoxide hydrolase in mammals.

“It is always important to realize that the most significant translational science we do in the university is fundamental science,” said Hammock, marveling that “this work to treat pain in companion animals, horses and humans all began by asking how caterpillars turn into butterflies.”

Hammock’s ensuing research led to the discovery that many regulatory molecules are controlled as much by degradation as biosynthesis. The epoxy fatty acids control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, depression, pain, and inflammation, among others.

A new treatment for pain

He founded EicOsis (pronounced eye-co-sis) in 2011 to “provide a new alternative to treat pain and inflammation without the side effects of opioids and other standard pain therapies.

A compound from his laboratory is now in human clinical trials as a non-addictive analgesic to replace opioids, and the sEH he co-discovered appears to be a key target to control Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, depression, and other chronic disorders of the central nervous system. He and his former doctoral student, Cindy McReynolds co-founded , a clinical startup to alleviate chronic pain without the use of opioids.

“Chronic pain affects 100 million Americans alone, and the increased prescription of opioids has led to a widespread public health emergency,” Hammock added. “Our company seeks to meet the unmet need for safe, non-addictive and effective pain medications that can help pain patients and fight the opioid crisis.”

Hammock witnessed “the depths of acute and chronic pain” as an Army Academy of Health Science medical officer and later as a postdoctoral fellow with the Rockefeller Foundation at Northwestern University. “The frustration of seeing the effects of terrible pain coupled with the inability to effectively treat it has led me on a life-long quest to address pain and related illnesses,” said Hammock. “The study of this enzyme and the natural mediators it regulates has the added benefit of providing deeper understanding of diseases from heart failure to Alzheimer’s which in turn is leading to new treatments.”

Hammock has authored or co-authored more than 1,400 publications and holds 65 U.S. patents in the fields of agriculture, environmental science and medicinal chemistry.

Still committed to the outdoors

In his leisure time, true to his Little Rock roots, he has taught mountaineering and whitewater rafting as part of the UC Davis Outdoor Adventures Program, and launched annual water balloon battles on the Briggs Hall lawn.

Highly honored by his peers, Hammock is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, s a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, and the recipient of scores of awards, including the first McGiff Memorial Awardee in Lipid Biochemistry; and the Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism, sponsored by the America Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He received UC Davis’ prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Innovation, part of the 2020 Chancellor's Innovation Awards. 

“Bruce Hammock and his research team are the perfect example of how UC Davis translates university research into societal impact,” said Dushyant Pathak, former associate vice chancellor for Innovation and Technology Commercialization in the UC Davis Office of Research.

“As a result of their fundamental work in unraveling both insect and human regulatory biology, the Hammock laboratory elucidated a biochemical pathway that regulates inflammation, pain and senescence,” Pathak said.

Helping others

“The University of California has been very good to me,” Hammock said. “A major goal is to pay UC back. The only way I know to do this is my helping others as well-- faculty staff and students.”

“The most basic goal is the most applied goal--do and teach unfettered science tempered with ethics. All of the practical accomplishments from my lab started as basic science. Good basic science always leads to applications. Implementation of ideas leads to stimulation of basic science- a wheel that keeps on turning.”

The wheel continues to turn for the “Little Rock kid” inspired by his scoutmaster seven decades ago.