Dr. Abraham Palmer was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) for his project titled “A Novel Pharmacotherapy for Alcoholism: Evaluation of Reward, Aversion, Compulsivity, Withdrawal & Reinstatement.” This is a five year grant that starts July 5, 2018 and ends April 30, 2023. This grant will fund a project to study how and why inhibitors of the enzyme GLO1 decrease ethanol drinking in mice and to develop GLO1 inhibitors for use as a therapy for alcohol use disorder.

The article “GWAS of lifetime cannabis use reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia,” was accepted for publication in Nature Neuroscience. The article was written by Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Abraham Palmer, and other co-authors. Check out the article here.

Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige recently received a travel award to attend the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 2018 meeting in Hollywood, Florida in December. This award will help defray the costs of travel and lodging.

Congratulations, Sandra!

The article, “Genetic Influences on Delayed Reward Discounting: A Genome-wide Prioritized Subset Approach,” was accepted for publication in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. The article was written by Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige and Dr. Abraham Palmer.

At the 41st Annual Research Society on Alcoholism Meeting in San Diego on June 16-20, Oksana presented a talk titled “Gene-microbiome interactions in addiction-related behaviors in outbred rats.”

This talk was part of a symposium called “The contribution of peripheral effectors in the dysregulation of neuronal pathways in addiction: from the gut-immune-brain axis to liver metabolism.”

At the 41st Annual Research Society on Alcoholism Meeting in San Diego on June 16-20, Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson and Dr. Abraham Palmer organized a symposium titled “Translational genetics of alcohol use disorders: multidisciplinary approaches to identifying novel therapeutic targets.”

Amanda presented a talk in the symposium titled “Evaluation of glyoxalase 1 as a novel therapeutic target for excessive ethanol consumption and comorbid disorders.”

The NIDA Genetics Consortium meeting was held on Saturday June 16th on the UCSD campus at the Medical Education and Telemedicine Building. Speakers from all over the world came to discuss recent advances in genetics and genomics as well as the genetics of substance abuse and addiction. See the full schedule here!

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented a talk titled, “Strategies to dissect the genetics of various phenotypes associated with SUD from multiple species: Are we measuring the right phenotype?”

Palmer lab member Amelie Baud recently gave birth to a baby girl named Chloe! Congratulations, Amelie! We can’t wait to meet her.

Dr. Abraham Palmer was awarded a High Impact Research Project Award from the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) for his project titled “Genetic relationship between impulsivity and nicotine abuse.” This is a three year, $750,000 grant that starts July 1, 2018 and ends June 30, 2021.  This grant will fund a large project to study the genetics of impulsivity and a variety of traits related to smoking and other forms of drug abuse.

A U01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was awarded to Dr. Robert Hitzemann, Dr. Suzanne Mitchell, and Dr. Abraham Palmer. The grant, titled “Identification of genetic features of delay discounting using a heterogeneous stock rat model,” will start on July 1, 2018 and will end April 30, 2023.