Deriving a de novo adolescent addiction treatment from developmental brain data

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PROJECT SUMMARY Dr. Feldstein Ewing is applying for a Mid-Career Investigator Award (K24) to support her development of innovative, translational (clinical + imaging) research in adolescent alcohol treatment. The K24 would protect time to facilitate her mentorship of emerging investigators. Her career development and training aims are tightly and synergistically linked to advance planned research aims. Dr. Feldstein Ewing's 5-10 year research plan is to develop more efficacious treatment for adolescents who struggle with addiction. Dr. Feldstein Ewing believes that advances from this area are most likely to stem from integrative approaches that directly query the developing brain, and aims to tailor articulated interventions that are responsive to that very specific period of neural development. Translational research in adolescent addiction is very labor intensive. K24 research funding is requisite to provide Dr. Feldstein Ewing with protected time from the call of clinical and administrative duties, which in this type of hospital/medical care setting are often highly time intensive, but unfortunately do not advance research, training, or mentorship. Thus, protected time available within this mechanism would facilitate precisely the type of protected coverage requisite for freeing up the investigator to learn more about existing interventions in the field of adolescent psychopathology, adolescent learning and memory, and advanced quantitative methods that can be used to maximize existing data that the candidate already has, to propel the field forward in terms of developing novel interventions for high-need adolescents struggling with addiction. This protection would also facilitate protected time for Dr. Feldstein Ewing to engage and involve mentees at every stage of this process. As with many other academic medical training centers, without this K24, this type of protected research/training time will not otherwise be available to Dr. Feldstein Ewing. This coverage is crucial for advancing innovations in adolescent treatment, at a critical juncture where the resources and opportunity are available for this work to be done. This is a high area of interest and need for NIAAA; this K24 award would launch a new field of scientists to start true progress in this domain of adolescent alcohol and addiction research, and its intervention.