Dr. Palmer has been interviewed in “Good Morning Sand Diego”. “Being willing to take risks is essential to success in the modern world,” said study co-author Abraham Palmer, PhD, professor of psychiatry and vice chair for basic research at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “But we also know that taking too many risks, or not giving enough weight to the consequences of risky decisions, confers vulnerability to smoking, alcoholism and other forms of drug addiction.”
https://www.kusi.com/study-identifies-genetic-variants-linked-to-risk-tolerance-and-risky-behaviors/

The manuscript entitled “Incentive salience attribution, “sensation-seeking” and “novelty-seeking” are independent traits in a large sample of male and female heterogeneous stock rats” by Alesa Hughson, Aidan Horvath, Katie Holl, Abraham Palmer, Leah C. Solberg Woods, Terry Robinson, and Shelly Flagel has been accepted for publication to the Scientific Reports.

Dr. Palmer gave a talk at IROC section (International Rat Omics Consortium).  The talk was focused on accomplishments of the  NIDA center for GWAS in outbred rats (P50DA037844, “Integrated GWAS of complex behavioral and gene expression traits in outbred rats”) over the four and a half years. Dr. Palmer also presented a poster highlighting goals and results of the P50 Center.
Dr. Sanchez-Roige gave a talk titled “Alcohol consumption vs. misuse: evidence for distinct genetic architecture”.

Manuscript “A Metal-Binding Pharmacophore Library Yields the Discovery of a Glyoxalase 1 Inhibitor” by Perez, Christian; Barkley-Levenson, Amanda; Dick, Benjamin; Glatt, Peter; Martinez, Yadira; Siegel, Dionicio; Momper, Jeremiah; Palmer, Abraham; Cohen, Seth has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Congratulations, Amanda!

Manuscript “Genome-wide association studies of impulsive personality traits (BIS-11 and UPPSP) and drug experimentation in up to 22,861 adult research participants identify loci in the CACNA1I and CADM2 genes” by Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Pierre Fontanillas, Sarah Elson, Joshua Gray, Harriet de Wit, James Mackillop, and Abraham Palmer has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Neuroscience.
This manuscripts has been widely discussed:

UCSD Health News article
23&Me research blog,
Genetica Medica portal (Spanish),
Scientific American (Arabic)

Palmer lab members gathered to celebrate Alex Gileta graduation before Alex moves back to Chicago.

Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige was awarded the Harry June Award. This special award is given to early career researchers in substance abuse and was established in honor of ACNP Member, Harry June, Ph.D. and is funded by the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. Dr. June was a renowned research scientist in the field of substance abuse and was a devoted mentor to students and young faculty.  Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige was acknowledged for this special award by Dr. Steve Hyman during the President’s Plenary Session: From Genetics to the Neurobiology

A new R01 grant from the National Eye Institute was awarded to Drs. Monica Jablonski, Abraham Palmer, and several others. The grant is titled, “Genetic Modulators of Glaucoma.”

Dr. Monica Jablonski (Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Tennessee) received the grant to study glaucoma-related traits in HS rats. Dr. Jablonski has been collaborating with the P50 Center, and this grant will fund phenotyping of eye samples and GWAS for glaucoma-related traits.

The article, “Social and anxiety-like behaviors contribute to nicotine self-administration in adolescent outbred rats,” was accepted for publication in Scientific Reports. Apurva Chitre, Dr. Oksana Polesskaya, and Dr. Abraham Palmer are co-authors along with several others.

Drs. Abraham Palmer and Sandra Sanchez-Roige were recently interviewed on “Spit,” an iHeartRadio podcast with 23andMe. They spoke, along with Nikki Sixx and Dr. Adi Jaffe, about their research on genetics and addiction.