MMI to participate in multicenter NIH research project

The UNMC Munroe-Meyer Institute will participate in a five-year, $8.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Vanderbilt Alcohol Research and Education Center.

The goal of the center is to perform research studies that translate findings from animal models into human studies and that use findings from human studies to guide new research directions in animal models. The center will support collaborative efforts by researchers at Vanderbilt and across the country to help better understand and treat alcohol use disorder.

Jennifer Blackford, PhD, MMI’s director of research, will serve as the associate director of VAREC and will lead one of four research projects tied to the grant.

Dr. Blackford’s MMI-based project will investigate brain changes and symptoms in people in the early stages of recovery from an alcohol use disorder. Heightened anxiety and depression are common in early recovery; however, Dr. Blackford’s research has shown that not everyone experiences these symptoms, which are thought to be triggers for relapse.

Dr. Blackford’s project will provide an in-depth study of people in the first month of recovery from an alcohol use disorder, including two brain scans and repeated symptom measures. Her goal is to identify the brain networks that predict anxiety and depression symptoms during early recovery from an AUD.

The new center grant was inspired by cross-species translational work that Dr. Blackford has been conducting with Danny Winder, PhD, director of the Vanderbilt Alcohol Research and Education Center and chair of the department of neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School for more than five years, Dr. Blackford said.

“It is challenging to perform research which rapidly translates findings between rodents and humans, and this large center grant will provide us with exactly that opportunity,” she said. “The center grant includes three rodent projects, which all connect conceptually with my human project. We hope that this will serve as a model for other researchers.”

The center includes a dissemination core that will focus on education and outreach by translating complex scientific findings into accessible information for the public. Plans include podcasts, webinars and a near-peer mentoring program.

The center also includes a research methods core that will establish a course and provide scholarships for researchers across the country to learn innovative neuroscience technologies at Vanderbilt. A summer student program will provide stipends for students from underrepresented communities to work in addiction labs at Vanderbilt, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and UNMC.