Keith L. Shelton, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Keith L. Shelton, Ph.D.

Department: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology

Phone: (804) 827-2104

Fax: (804) 828-2117

Email: keith.shelton@vcuhealth.org

Address/Location:
Robert Blackwell Smith Building, Room 756B
410 North 12th Street
Box 980613
Richmond, Virginia 23298

Education

  • Virginia Commonwealth University, 1995
  • Post-doc, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • Post-doc, Wake Forest University

Research interests

  • Behavioral and neurochemical mechanisms of drug reinforcement and relapse
  • Abuse-related behavioral effects of drug aerosols and vapors
  • Stimulant and opioid relapse-prevention medication development

For over 25 years we have utilized animal models to focus on three major areas to improve human health.

  • Understanding the neurochemical processes underlying volatile inhalant abuse, a problem which disproportionately impacts adolescents.  
  • Exploring the abuse-related effects of drug vapors, aerosols and gasses with current efforts focusing on e-cigarettes.  
  • Developing medications to blunt relapse to substance use disorders, with a focus on psychomotor stimulants and opioids.

We employ a wide variety of in vivo techniques in rodent models including intravenous drug self-administration, inhalation self-administration, intracranial self-stimulation and drug discrimination.  Dr. Shelton’s background in aerospace fabrication as well as behavioral pharmacology has allowed our laboratory to repeatedly push the boundaries of existing technology to innovate new more translational animal models in this area.

Selected publications:

Akinola LS, Buzzi B, Kalck E, Le K, Klein S, Vaughn J, Basir J, Poklis J, Whiteaker P, Shelton KL, Damaj MI. (2025).  Characterization of a novel-oronasal-restricted nicotine vaping self-administration model in mice.  Neuropharmacology 268: 110315.
Alkhlaif Y, Shelton KL (2024)  Stimulus mediation, specificity and impact of menthol in rats trained to discriminate puffs of nicotine e-cigarette aerosol from nicotine-free aerosol.  Psychopharmacology 241(8) 1527-1538.
Alkhlaif Y, Shelton KL (2023)  Assessment of abuse-related discriminative stimulus effects of nicotine aerosol in rodent.  J. Pharmacol Exp Ther 385(3) 171-179.
Shelton KL, Nicholson KL (2022)  Reinforcing effects of fentanyl and sufentanil aerosol in rats.  Psychopharmacology 239(8) 2491-2502.

Shelton KL (2018) Discriminative stimulus effects of abused inhalants.  Current Topics in Behavioral Neuroscience 39:113-139. 

Tracy ME, Banks ML, Shelton KL. (2016) Negative allosteric modulation of GABA(A) receptors inhibits facilitation of brain stimulation reward by drugs of abuse in C57BL6/J mice.  Psychopharmacology 233(4):715-725.

Richardson KL, Shelton KL, (2015)  N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor channel blocker-like discriminative stimulus effects of nitrous oxide gas. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics  352(1):156-165.

Tracy ME, Slavova-Hernandez GG, Shelton KL (2014). Assessment of reinforcement enhancing effects of toluene vapor and nitrous oxide in intracranial self-stimulation.  Psychopharmacology 231(7):1339-1350.

Shelton KL, Nicholson KL (2013).  Benzodiazepine-like discriminative stimulus effects of toluene vapor.  European Journal of Pharmacology 720(1-3):131-137.

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