UAMS Opens Center for Addiction Research

Research studies are underway in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' (UAMS) new Center for Addiction Research, a collaborative effort between the Colleges of Medicine and Public Health to further the understanding of the addiction process and find ways to break the cycle.

"Our goal is to become one of the nation's premier centers on addiction," said Warren K. Bickel, Ph.D., the center's director and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the UAMS College of Medicine.

Bickel is a national authority on examining the underlying behavioral processes of drug dependence in humans and has conducted research that examines novel, cost-effective ways to deliver treatment.

To study the actual areas of the brain that correlate with a behavioral process, discounting the future, that may underlie addiction, Bickel has teamed with Diana Lindquist, assistant professor of radiology and psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine, to use brain imaging to show which part of the brain is engaged when people with addictions make decisions.

In a previous study, it was determined that when people without addictions make choices for immediate commodities, a more primitive part of the brain becomes engaged, but when they make decisions about the future, a more modern part of the brain is engaged. It is possible, Bickel said, that addicts are making choices about the future in the more primitive part of the brain, which may not be able to rationalize beyond basic survival instinct.

"This is a great opportunity to collaborate and determine how addiction changes brain function as it invokes short term vs. long term gain," he said.

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Studies include magnetic resonance imaging of the brain to determine which parts of the brain are involved when addicts make decisions.

UAMS Biomedical Company Moves Closer to Clinical Trials

InterveXion Therapeutics, a company started in the biomedical business incubator at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), and Medicago, a Canadian biopharmaceutical company, have formed a multi-year product co-development collaboration.

The two companies will use Medicago’s Proficia™ Protein Technology for the production of monoclonal antibodies therapeutics designed to treat drug abuse.

InterveXion has received a $3 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct clinical trials for the first antibody treatment for addiction to the drug known as phencyclidine, or PCP.

Michael Owens, Ph.D., director of the UAMS Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse and a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the UAMS College of Medicine, invented the addiction treatment. Owens joined Brooks Gentry, M.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology, and pharmacology and toxicology at UAMS; Ralph Henry, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; and Holtz to start IntereXion in early 2004. Owens is the chief science officer, Gentry is the chief medical officer and Henry serves as vice president for biopharmaceuticals.

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