Training Program on Development of Medications for Substance Use Disorder

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This T32 application, the Center for Drug Discovery “Training Program on Medications Development for Substance Use Disorder (SUD)”, is to provide broad training to PhD students and postdoctoral scientists on drug development for SUD. The Training Program rationale is driven by the socioeconomic burden and medical need associated with the lack of safe and effective medicines to treat SUD in the US and globally. The Training Program blends mentorship, coursework, and research activities in a setting with state-of-the-art facilities. The goal of training is to equip trainees to develop as productive biomedical research scientists, with consummate expertise in SUD pharmacotherapies research. The main locus of this training program is the Center for Drug Discovery (CDD) at Northeastern University that has unique technologies housed in one cohesive unit, including, high-throughput synthetic chemistry and pharmacological activity screening; mass spectrometry-based genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, as well as, bioanalytical analysis; high-resolution NMR technologies; and in vivo MRI imaging. Notably, CDD Training Program faculty includes SUD researchers at Harvard Medical School and McLean Psychiatric Hospital, as well as, at Tufts University and Medical Center. Moreover, CDD Training Program consultants include drug development scientists from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industrial community in Boston. All participating institutions are within an 8-mile radius of each other in the metropolitan Boston area. The Training Program presents a premiere discovery and translational node to address the appalling morbidity and mortality associated with apparent lack of effective medications for opioid use disorder and complete absence of approved medications for SUD associated with cannabinoids and psychostimulants—it appears that repurposing of old drugs has not worked and the lack of novel medicines from pharmaceutical industry and federal laboratories provides strong rationale for our academic-based training program on novel medication development for SUD, with its unique multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional approach. A unique feature of the Training Program is engagement of junior faculty, including, from the Medications Development Branch of the NIDA Intramural Program, to provide for the next generation of SUD medication development scientists. Training Program faculty assist pre- and postdoctoral trainees to develop scientific integrity, collaboration, grantsmanship, and presentation skills, as well as, expertise in methodologies, including, synthetic chemistry, molecular and behavioral pharmacology, drug pharmacokinetics and metabolism, “omics” (pharmacogenomics, proteomics, metabolomics), and neuroimaging. In addition to core research ethics training, there will be ethics roundtable discussions. Some other features of the Training Program include postdoctoral–predoctoral trainee collaboration, a trainees’ seminar series, and trainee engagement with SUD scientists at the annual CDD/NIDA-sponsored symposium, Chemistry and Pharmacology of Drug Abuse.