Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorder

Leveraging systems pharmacology to advance precision medicine for Gabapentin treatment of AUD

Dr. Bernie Daigle, associate professor in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Computer Science, was recently awarded a grant from New York University (NYU) School of Medicine to serve as a consultant for the NIAAA-funded project "Leveraging systems pharmacology to advance precision medicine for Gabapentin treatment of AUD,” led by PI Charles Marmar.

This funding will support efforts in the Daigle Lab to identify and characterize molecular pathways as predictors of likely responders to Gabapentin treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD). AUD affects approximately one in three individuals in the US at some point during their lifetime and is a major cause of medical and social disability, preventable death, and economic burden. A key barrier to successful treatment of AUD is the substantial heterogeneity in clinical features and psychiatric comorbidities among individuals with AUD. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has therefore called for research to address treatment of specific domains of AUD and interactions with specific common comorbid disorders.

Gabapentin, an FDA-approved anticonvulsant which modulates the release of excitatory neurotransmitters, has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of AUD. Dr. Daigle will work with collaborators at NYU to leverage systems pharmacology to advance precision medicine for Gabapentin treatment of AUD. Specifically, he will work to discover genomic predictors of individual differences in response to Gabapentin treatment. The search for these predictors will focus on eight molecular pathways related to the pharmacology of Gabapentin, including drug transport, neuro-inflammatory, and alcohol reward pathways. Expected outcomes of this research include the discovery of novel genomic features that predict responders and non-responders for Gabapentin treatment of AUD, along with the creation of novel computational methods with the potential to advance personalized treatment of other substance use disorders.

For more information on this project, contact Daigle at bjdaigle@memphis.edu.