Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) awarded McLean Hospital Corporation a Project Grant totaling $194,206 under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279) for the period June 1, 2026 through May 31, 2031. This five-year research initiative aims to identify individual clinical and environmental predictors of buprenorphine treatment response in patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). The project will harmonize data from five existing clinical trials encompassing 1,439 participants to conduct a comprehensive analysis of baseline patient characteristics associated with treatment outcomes at both the sample and individual patient levels—an advancement over prior studies that have focused exclusively on population-level predictions.

The primary deliverable is a predictive framework that leverages previously collected clinical trial data to inform individually adaptive interventions tailored to patients' specific needs and risk factors. By addressing the heterogeneity of OUD patients and identifying which individuals are unlikely to respond to buprenorphine maintenance treatment, this research seeks to fill a critical knowledge gap in the field. The findings are intended to enable the design of more effective, personalized treatment approaches for the nearly half of buprenorphine patients who currently experience relapse to illicit opioid use or treatment discontinuation. Research will be conducted at McLean Hospital's Belmont, Massachusetts facility, leveraging the institution's established expertise in substance abuse and psychiatric research.