Last year, NIDA funded four new projects through its Program Announcements (PA) for International Collaboration on Drug Abuse and Addiction Research. The PAs solicit applications involving research partnerships between NIDA grantees at U.S. institutions and their partners in other countries. Three R01 Research Grant Proposals and one R21 Exploratory/Development Research Grant were funded:
- Marek C. Chawarski, Ph.D., Yale University, and Wang Zhou, M.D., Ph.D., Wuhan Centers for Disease Control and Tongji Medical College, China, will compare three types of behavioral treatments in combination with methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) to determine which treatment works best to help heroin-dependent injection drug users enrolled in MMT to stop using drugs, adhere to methadone, and reduce HIV risk behaviors.
- Robert E. Booth, Ph.D., University of Colorado Denver, and Sergii Dvoriak, M.D., Ph.D., Ukrainian Institute on Public Health Policy, will conduct randomized clinical trials in three Ukrainian regions to compare the effectiveness of two interventions in reducing the risk of HIV acquisition and transmission among injecting drug users.
- Kimberly C. Brouwer, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, and María Remedios Lozada Romero, M.D., Pro-Comusida, Mexico, will investigate the continually evolving risk environments for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among female sex workers on the U.S.–Mexican border, including perceptions of violence and access to drug abuse prevention and treatment and health care services.
- Donnal L. Gruol, Ph.D., Scripps Research Institute, and Lars Terenius, Ph.D., Karolinska Institute, Sweden, will use mouse models and a new approach to study brain receptor dynamics, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, integrated with confocal laser scanning microscopy to analyze mu-opioid receptor variants that may have consequences for opioid analgesia and drug addiction in humans.
To find more information about the International Research Collaboration on Drug Abuse and Addiction Research Program Announcement, visit www.drugabuse.gov/research-funding/funding-sources/nida-international-program-announcements.