Alcohol addiction: molecular and epigenetic mechanisms

Purpose and goal

There is high clinical demand of an ideal pain killer with wide safety margin, potent analgesic effect, with no or minimal effect on respiration, gastrointestinal tract and low abuse potential. We are aiming to develop such a pain killer that would help health care and safe myriad number of patients from serious side effects.

Expected results and effects

The full plan is figured out and subsidiary points are being discussed. Rules between collaborators with specific competences. This idea is in existence for a decade, however, the implementation has been difficult. Now with the advanced technology and in our case combining several competences needed for the success of the current project we divided the work between experts in organic chemistry (design and synthesis of hybrids) and toxicology/forensic experts, experts in respiration biology and experts in genetic/epigenetics; the project leader´s institute.

Planned approach and implementation

The project involves both in vitro and in vivo systems. The work includes: 1) Drug design and synthesis. 2) Animal experiments. 3) Behavioral analyses. 4) Gene expression analyses in related brain loci in postmortem human brains and mice. 5) Immunochistochemical analyses. 6) Calcium imaging for neural activity.