The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has awarded Jordan McCall, PhD, an associate professor in the Center for Clinical Pharmacology in the WashU Medicine Department of Anesthesiology, a five-year, $3.4 million grant to study how fentanyl disrupts the brain’s main alert and stress center — the locus coeruleus — and drives relapse to opioid use.
The locus coeruleus is a source of the brain’s natural pain relief, but growing evidence suggests chronic opioid exposure can transform it into a driver of drug seeking and negative mood. McCall’s team has found that neurons in the locus coeruleus have a natural “off switch” — receptors that respond to the body’s own opioids — which normally keeps drug reward in check. When that off switch weakens, it may make relapse more likely. In collaboration with the Al-Hasani lab and Moron-Concepcion lab, the McCall lab will examine how this loss of natural inhibition after long-term fentanyl use affects brain circuits tied to negative mood and cravings.
Read more on the Department of Anesthesiology website.