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Martin W. Adler, PhD, Director of CSAR

center for substance abuse research

Martin W. Adler, PhD, Director and Toby K. Eisenstein, PhD, Co-DirectorA Message from Martin W. Adler, PhD, Director

and Toby K. Eisenstein, PhD, Co-Director

Center for Substance Abuse Research

 

The mission of the Center for Substance Abuse Research is to encourage and facilitate research on drugs of abuse and the consequences of their use, whether abused or therapeutic. This mission encompasses understanding the effects of the drugs on various systems in the body, as well as the study of the receptors to which the drugs bind, the signal transduction pathways they evoke, alterations that they induce in gene expression, neuronal pathways that they stimulate, and behaviors that they induce. Investigators in the Center seek to understand the mechanisms by which drugs of abuse (e.g. opioids, cannabinoids, cocaine, nicotine, amphetamines, and MDMA) alter the function of systems including, but not limited to, nervous, immune, gastrointestinal, and pulmonary at the behavioral, physiological, cellular, and molecular levels. These studies extend to defining the natural functions of the endogenous ligands and pathways that are hijacked by the drugs of abuse--for example, in ameliorating pain, inducing euphoria, modulating inflammation, or altering behaviors. From such research, CSAR hopes to elucidate the basis for addiction and physical dependence, and to delineate the neuroimmune connections that alter functions of both the immune and nervous systems. Research in CSAR has the potential for identifying interventions that could alter these fundamental biological processes and pathways.

 

More specifically, at the present time the research mission of CSAR is focused on four important areas. One is the exploration of the connections between the nervous and immune systems as elucidated by drugs of abuse and the receptors and endogenous ligands of these two systems. This area is neuroimmunopharmacology. It includes intensive investigation into:

  1. The role of chemokines in the brain,
  2. The interactions between chemokines and the opioids and cannabinoids,
  3. The relationship between drugs of abuse, chemokines, and pathogenesis of the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV,
  4. Exploitation of targeted receptors used by the drugs of abuse, in the nervous system, for therapeutic applications in a variety of disease states, including stroke, head trauma, and spinal cord injury, and finally,
  5. Nicotine-induced airway inflammation leading to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

 

The second area is the continued exploration of the basic biology and pharmacology of receptor-ligand interactions for drugs of abuse, with implications for understanding the biological basis of addiction and the neural pathways that are engaged. The third area is drug interactions. People rarely abuse only a single drug. Therefore, in a variety of physiological systems and in measurements of behavior, CSAR researchers are examining the effects of more than one drug on the interaction of a drug with its receptor system or with other endogenous receptor systems--for example, cannabinoid and opioid drugs and their endogenous pathways. The fourth area is an understanding of the factors that control behaviors induced by the drugs of abuse, both in animals and humans.

 

Part of the mission of CSAR is to encourage and foster interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to understanding the basic biology of abused drugs. To this end, CSAR faculty have their primary appointments in the Departments of Pharmacology, Microbiology and Immunology, Physiology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Science in the School of Medicine; the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy; the Department of Physical Therapy in the College of Health Professions; and the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts.

 

CSAR faculty are examining the biological effects of various drugs of abuse at every level, from the molecular, to receptor expression, to signal transduction, to neuronal signaling, to whole-animal behavior.