Our Research
The Alcohol Center of Research-Nebraska (ACORN) is funded by a P50 grant that allows us to support expansion of alcohol research already happening at UNMC.
- Nebraska has an outstanding and exemplary alcohol research history.
- Starting in the 1960s with the VA Liver Study Unit
- VA Alcohol Center (1995-2010)
- Continuous NIAAA-funded alcohol R01, R21 projects
- Continuous VA Merit, CDS and RCS funding
- Current R25 support (undergraduate funding)
- We have a strong thematic focus of the alcohol exposome.
- We have an outstanding core of collaborative, funded and established investigators and a remarkable pool of young investigators dedicated to alcohol research. Within the last five years, there have been more than 70 collaborative publications from our group.
- Nebraska has been identified by the Centers for Disease Control as a high alcohol-consuming state and this issue is under addressed.
The focus of our center is the alcohol exposome, which is composed of exposures to which an individual is subjected over time. The goal of the alcohol exposome is to translate how exposures (age, nutritional status, obesity, infection, smoking, pathogens, etc.) interact with alcohol to cause and/or exacerbate injury.
Research Projects
The Exposome and Lung Bacterial Infection: Role of Liver and Gut-Derived Extracellular Vesicles
Lead: Todd Wyatt, PhD
Co-Investivators: Derrick Samuelson, PhD, and Daren Knoell, PharmD.
Goal: Understand how multiple exposures affect alcohol-related pathologies in organ-to-organ axes, with a particular focus on lung disease.
Focus: Exploration of a complex, multi-organ axis that is paramount to the exposomal basis of disease.
Alcohol Promotes Hepatitis B Progression by Impairment of Innate Immunity in Liver Cells
Lead: Natalia Osna, MD, PhD
Co-Investigator: Murali Ganesan, PhD
Goal: Delineate the effects of chronic ethanol and other environmental exposures to HBV-expressing hematocytes
Focus: Infection/alcohol/innate immunity cross-talk between parenchymal and non-parenchymal liver cells as well as between liver and other organs in the setting of HBV-infection and alcohol exposure.
The Role of TP-R on Obesity and/or Alcohol-Induced Multi-Organ Damage: Liver and Heart
Lead: Saraswathi Viswanathan, PhD
Co-Investigators: Carol Casey, PhD, and Paras Mishra, PhD
Collaborator: Pal Pacher, PhD
Goal: To uncover the role of TP-R in modulating AALD and ACM in the presence or absence of obesity.
Focus: Determine how alcohol and high-fat diet interact to promote organ injury and examine a role for TPR and its contribution to alcohol-induced alterations in the setting of obesity.
Development and Progression of Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease: Effect of Aging
Lead: Kusum Kharbanda, PhD
Co-Investigator: Karuna Rasineni, PhD
Consultants: Edward Harris, PhD, and Srivastan Kidambi, PhD
Goal: To examine aging-related structural and functional changes in the GI tract, adipose and liver, with a focus on alcohol-related effects.
Focus: Examine how aging leads to greater severity of ethanol-induced organ damage.