Biomedical Research Understanding the Mechanisms Between Substance Use and Chronic Disease

Researchers at Brown University have secured a 12.3 million-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health for expanding their research on substance misuse and chronic disease. The funding will help to expand biomedical research and training and broaden recruitment for studies to include participants from across the nation and world.

Providence/USA – The National Institutes of Health has awarded Brown University’s Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation, launched in 2019 to conduct research on the intersections of substance use and disease, renewed grant funding expected to total 12.3 million dollars over five years.

The funding will enable the center, based at Brown’s School of Public Health, to expand biomedical research and training and broaden recruitment for studies to include participants from across the nation and world. Building on research started during the center’s first five years, it will also support early-career faculty members as they explore questions such as the effectiveness of alternative nicotine products on people with obesity who smoke, or the intergenerational effects of parental alcohol use on children’s behavior disorders.

While substance use is known to increase the risk for, and progression of, numerous chronic diseases, the mechanisms underlying associations are poorly understood, said Peter Monti, a professor of alcohol and addiction studies at Brown and director of the Center Director for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation.

“We're only at the tip of the iceberg with regard to understanding the role of substance use on chronic disease,” Monti said. “There are many questions that will arise over the years to come — for example, around our understanding of how misuse of cannabis affects chronic disease in the long run, or around the connection between certain drugs of abuse and psychiatric disorders. The early-career scientists who will be supported by this funding will be the people who ultimately chip away at that iceberg in order to provide information for different populations on how substance use can affect health.”

The Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation is classified as a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, part of a National Institute for General Medical Sciences program that focuses on developing institutional research infrastructure and helping promising early-career researchers establish projects so they can successfully compete for additional federal funding.

In this second phase of federal support, Monti said that the center will grow its research capacity and broaden community impact, expanding services such as the measurement of biomarkers to researchers in Rhode Island and beyond. A distinguishing factor of the center is that it is based at the School of Public Health, unlike most other Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, which are typically based at medical schools or hospitals.

“We have a unique opportunity to not only do the basic science work and come up with the answers to these interdisciplinary biomedical research questions,” Monti said, “but we also have behavioral health and public health researchers, as well as health policy scholars, who can help implement change on multiple levels.”

The center will fund and support projects led by early-career faculty who are mentored by established faculty members such as the center’s deputy director, Dr. Jasjit Ahluwalia, a professor of behavioral and social sciences and medicine, and Jennifer Tidey, a professor of behavioral and social sciences and of psychiatry and human behavior.

“Through innovative interdisciplinary research, the Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation will not only contribute to new knowledge, but will continue to serve as the nexus and path to independence for the next generation of scientists,” Ahluwalia said.

The grant will fund three initial research projects, each led by an early-stage investigator, with administrative, clinical laboratory and recruitment support from the center.

Cara Murphy, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences, will investigate effects of alternative nicotine products on smoking and weight among individuals with obesity who smoke. Lauren Micalizzi, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences (research) will examine the effects of parental alcohol use on child behavioral disorders. Alexander Sokolovsky, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences, has proposed to leverage novel wearable biosensor technology as well as behavioral, mood and physical assessments to measure the link between cannabis use and depression (this project is awaiting final approval from the NIH).

A supplemental grant will support a collaboration among five researchers to complete a one-year project in the area of metabolic liver diseases (formerly known as fatty liver diseases), as they relate to obesity and at-risk drinking. In addition to Monti, the research team includes Hayley Treloar Padovano and Mollie Monnig, both of whom are behavioral and social sciences scholars, with gastroenterologist Dr. Kittichai Promrat and Stephanie Goldstein, an associate professor (research) of psychiatry and human behavior and research scientist at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center of the Miriam Hospital.

The center is supported by an Institutional Development Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (P20GM130414).

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