Block Grant R56MH012526

This Project Grant award of $153,512 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279) aims to assess whether targeting the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus can disrupt fentanyl-linked context memories and prevent relapse in addiction. The project has two key objectives: 1) to determine if inhibiting dentate gyrus neurons active during reward-context memory encoding can reduce drug-linked context memory recall, and 2) to...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), under the Federal Grant Program 93.242 Mental Health Research Grants, provides $760,143 in funding to the University of Maryland, Baltimore to study the interactions between the endocannabinoid system and cholinergic transmission in the hippocampus and their impact on working memory and reward motivation. The research will use animal models and human subjects to investigate the role of acetylcholine and cannabinoid...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under CFDA 93.242 - Mental Health Research Grants provides $460,855.00 in funding to New York University School of Medicine to investigate the cellular and circuit mechanisms by which acetylcholine promotes associative learning in the primary somatosensory cortex. The key objectives of this 2-year award are to: 1) Use 2-photon microscopy to study the magnitude and time course of acetylcholine release in the...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the federal Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), provides $656,121 to The Johns Hopkins University to investigate the impact of adolescent cannabis use on prefrontal cortex maturation and cognitive function. The key objectives of the research are to: 1) Identify the molecular and morphological changes in microglia induced by adolescent THC exposure via cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CNR1) signaling;...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the federal Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), provides $295,325 to Epivario Inc. to develop a novel small molecule inhibitor of the metabolic enzyme ACSS2 as a potential treatment for cocaine use disorder (CUD). The key objectives are to assess the pharmacological properties, including selectivity, efficacy on epigenetic regulation, and pharmacokinetics, of Epivario's lead ACSS2 inhibitor...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), is providing $121,364 to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to conduct critical investigation into the neural circuitry that supports goal-directed and habit learning. The research will use advanced techniques such as optogenetic manipulation and in vivo fiber photometry to study the role of dopaminergic projections from the ventral...

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) awarded a $498,531 Project Grant (CFDA 93.279 - Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs) to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to study the effects of HIV infection and methamphetamine use on brain aging and cognitive function. The 5-year project will use structural and functional neuroimaging to develop models for estimating "brain age" and assess how HIV status and methamphetamine use impact neural integrity and inflammation....

This Project Grant award, titled "Acute Effects of THC in Older Adults", is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279). The award, totaling $502,500.00, will support research at Yale University to investigate the acute cognitive, anxiogenic, and cardiovascular effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in older adults. The research aims to elucidate how age-related changes in the endocannabinoid system, cognitive...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), provides $215,613 to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to investigate the role of the reelin protein in the cellular and behavioral responses to drugs of abuse, particularly cocaine. The project aims to rigorously study the hypothesis that reelin facilitates the dopamine-induced neuronal adaptations that follow drug exposure and...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), provides $249,236 to Duke University to study the chromatin regulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in cocaine craving and relapse. The project aims to use innovative molecular genetic methods to define the chromatin architecture changes in dopamine neurons that accompany persistent alterations in gene expression, specifically focused on...