New grant leads to IU addiction research center
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A grant from the National Institutes of Health aims to position Indiana University to support substance-use-disorder researchers to find new addiction treatments.
The grant, stemming from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, will provide about $7 million over five years to the IU Bloomington Center for Cannabis, Cannabinoids and Addiction. It is one of 15 other centers that are funded through the NIDA’s Core Center of Excellence Grants.
The center will work to answer unresolved questions about addiction and serve as a resource to those researching how lipid biomarkers and advanced optical imaging affect the brain when it comes to addictive substances.
The university also said it will train scientists and researchers, particularly those from underrepresented communities, on new technologies.
“Through the center, we will work to innovate lipid mass spectrometry and high-resolution imaging so they can be used to address questions about substance use that cannot be answered by existing techniques,” said Ken Mackie, IU professor and lead principal investigator of the center, in a news release. “With our decades of experience and the combination of techniques we offer all under one roof, we are confident we can make advancements that ultimately better the lives of people with substance use disorders.”
Programs resulting from the new initiative include eight-week summer courses in Bloomington’s STEM Summer Scholars Institute, a two-week course on imaging at four times a year through the Multi-Scale Imaging Core and a pilot grant program to send funding to young researchers to advance their research.