NIDA has awarded postdoctoral fellowships to scientists from France, Iran, and Northern Ireland. The French Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm) has awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to a U.S. scientist. These NIDA-supported fellows will work with mentors who are NIDA employees or grantees at the mentors’ institutions in the United States.
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NIDA–Inserm Postdoctoral Drug Abuse Research Fellows
- Yann Pelloux, Ph.D., of France has been awarded a 12-month extension of his fellowship to expand studies he is conducting with his NIDA Intramural Research Program mentors Yavin Shaham, Ph.D., and Geoffrey Schoenbaum, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Pelloux will continue studies to determine (1) the causal role of different brain regions in context-induced relapse to cocaine seeking after punishment-imposed abstinence; and (2) the effect of chronic, extended access, cocaine self-administration on basal amygdaloid nucleus neuronal encoding.
- Andrew F. Scheyer, Ph.D., of the United States has been awarded a 12-month extension of his fellowship to expand studies he is conducting with his mentor, 1997 NIDA INVEST Fellow Olivier Manzoni, Ph.D., Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée, in Marseille, France. Dr. Scheyer will investigate mechanisms underlying GABAergic signaling changes in the prefrontal cortex during early development and the impact of in utero and perinatal cannabis exposure on the GABAergic system. He also will characterize and elucidate mechanisms underlying alterations in synaptic plasticity induced by cannabis exposure during juvenile and adolescent development.
- INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellow. Reza Ghanbari, Ph.D., of Iran is an assistant professor at the Digestive Disease Research Institute of Shariati Hospital in Iran. During his 12-month fellowship, he will use metabolomics—high-throughput analysis of low molecular mass compounds in biofluids—that can reflect the metabolic response of the body to opium exposure and potentially reveal biomarkers of drug abuse. Dr. Ghanbari hopes to clarify the effects of opium on metabolic pathways, identify potential markers of long-term opium addiction, chart the molecular pathway of addiction, and find unknown metabolites that differentiate phenotypes. His mentor is Susan Sumner, Ph.D., RTI International, a NIDA grantee in the NIH Common Fund Metabolomics Program.
- INVEST/Clinical Trials Network Drug Abuse Research Fellow. Anne Campbell, Ph.D., of Queen’s University Belfast, in Northern Ireland, will spend her 6-month fellowship working with Dennis McCarty, Ph.D., Oregon Health and Science University. Dr. Campbell will use a mixed methods approach to examine health records from primary care medical clinics located in Portland, Oregon, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, to assess rates of (1) screening for cannabis use and (2) diagnosis of cannabis use disorders. She also will evaluate the feasibility—and pilot test the use—of a brief screening tool for cannabis use disorders in a Portland primary care setting. Dr. Campbell and Dr. McCarty hope this information will help facilitate development of a cannabis user patient registry that will add specific drug-using behaviors and treatments (where applicable) in patient health care records.