PROVIDENCE – The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Brown University’s Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation $12.3 million over five years to research intersections of substance use and disease.
The funding will allow the center, which launched in 2019 and is based at Brown’s School of Public Health, to expand biomedical research and training and broaden recruitment for studies to include participants from across the U.S. and the world.
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It will also help early-career faculty members look into questions such as the effectiveness of alternative nicotine products on people with obesity who smoke.
While substance use is known to increase the risk of and worsen several chronic diseases, the connections are not well understood, said Peter Monti, a professor of alcohol and addiction studies at Brown and director of the Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation.
“We’re only at the tip of the iceberg with regard to understanding the role of substance use on chronic disease,” Monti said. “There are many questions that will arise over the years to come – for example, around our understanding of how misuse of cannabis affects chronic disease in the long run, or around the connection between certain drugs of abuse and psychiatric disorders. The early-career scientists who will be supported by this funding will be the people who ultimately chip away at that iceberg in order to provide information for different populations on how substance use can affect health.”
The center is classified as a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, part of a National Institute for General Medical Sciences program that is focused on developing research resources and helping early-career researchers establish projects so they can compete for more funding.
This is the center’s second phase of federal support. Monti said the center will grow its research capacity and expand services like measurement of biomarkers to researchers in Rhode Island and elsewhere. The center is also unique because it’s based at Brown’s School of Public Health, unlike other Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, which are based in medical schools or hospitals.
The center will fund projects by early-career faculty who are mentored by established faculty members such as the center’s deputy director, Jasjit Ahluwalia, a professor of behavioral and social sciences and medicine, and Jennifer Tidey, a professor of behavioral and social sciences, psychiatry and human behavior.
The grant will fund three initial research projects, each led by an early-stage investigator, with administrative, clinical laboratory and recruitment support from the center.
Cara Murphy, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences, plans to investigate the effects of alternative nicotine products on smoking and weight among those with obesity who smoke; Lauren Micalizzi, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences research, will study the effects of parents’ alcohol use on a child’s behavioral disorder; Alexander Sokolovsky, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences, has proposed to use new wearable biosensor technology, as well as to conduct behavioral, mood and physical assessments to measure the link between cannabis use and depression. This project still needs final approval from the National Institutes of Health.
Another grant will support collaboration among five researchers to complete a one-year project in metabolic liver diseases and how they relate to obesity and at-risk drinking. Along with Monti, the research team includes Hayley Treloar Padovano and Mollie Monnig, both of whom are behavioral and social sciences scholars; Dr. Kittichai Promrat, who is a gastroenterologist; and Stephanie Goldstein, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior and research scientist at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital.
Katie Castellani is a PBN staff writer. You may contact her at Castellani@PBN.com.
