With renewed funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation will build on its research to understand mechanisms linking substance use with chronic disease.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - 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 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.
