Grant: Project Grant

Drug addiction is one of the most prevalent chronic psychiatric disorders in the world, including in Canada where 21.6% of the population meets the criteria for a substance use disorder (Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey). Without accounting for the devastating consequences on the family structure, in Canada only, the societal and economic burden of mental illness (including drug addiction) is estimated at $51 billion per year (Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada). Yet, despite decades of research, treatments remain symptomatic, and 40-60% of addicted individuals appear resistant to treatment, and relapse after a period of abstinence. Diversifying pharmacotherapies could address this gap. Thus, there is an urgent clinical need to identify and harness novel mechanisms by which abused substances exert their addictive properties, a crucial step for developing novel and combinatory pharmacotherapies to treat addiction or to provide alternatives for treatment-resistant drug abuse. The research conducted in Dr. Kourrich's laboratory aims to identify these mechanisms and use an integrative approach combining cellular and molecular biology, cellular electrophysiology, and preclinical animal models of addiction to determine their cellular bases and their contributions to the development and perpetuation of drug addiction. The power of this work lies in its ability to inform both biological mechanisms and translational relevance to impact the clinical problem of addiction.