MONKEY ALCOHOL TISSUE RESEARCH RESOURCE (MATRR)

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. Excessive alcohol ingestion, occasionally or chronically, is co-morbid with medical disorders affecting the brain and behavior as well as other organ damage. Much of what is known about risk for and the consequence of heavy alcohol consumption, including mechanisms of organ damage, is derived from rodent studies or retrospective human accounts. The Monkey Alcohol Tissue Research Resource (MATRR) is a unique post-mortem tissue bank to ensure tissue from animals chronically drinking alcohol, as well as their related drinking and genetic information, is available to the wider alcohol research community insuring reduced numbers of animals used in research. The tissue is derived from a standard protocol of ethanol self-administration in three species of monkeys housed at ONPRC (rhesus and cynomolgus) and Wake Forest (vervet). This resource will provide novel data for hypothesis testing relating the risk for and consequences of alcohol consumption and serve to bi-directionally bridge the gap between rodent and human studies. The basis of the MATRR is that non human primates, specifically monkeys, show a range of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol (3.0 g/kg or a 12 drink equivalent/day) over long periods of time (12-30 months) with concomitant pathological changes in endocrine, hepatic and central nervous system (CNS) processes. These longitudinal designs span "stages of drinking" from ethanol-naive to early alcohol exposure to chronic abuse. The demand for, and the quality of, the tissues are already high as reflected in the number of requests and publications. Nevertheless, this resource needs further development in order to fulfill its potential as a cutting edge translational tool in alcoholism research.