Professor David Nutt
Cluster Title: Imperial College and Cambridge Addiction (ICCAM) - A two-university cluster for the study of aetiology and translation in addiction with partnerships
Area of interest
Our goal is to better understand the brain mechanisms of addiction and to accelerate the development of new treatments based on an understanding of these mechanisms. Our cluster comprises researchers from a wide range of disciplines – from molecular genetics and neurochemistry of drug abuse vulnerability in rodents through to the brain processes underpinning the psychology of addiction in human patients. This large span of expertise is deliberately chosen to allow the maximal cross-talk between the preclinical and clinical scientists so that translational medicine approaches in both directions can be applied to addiction. We will use the growing knowledge of the brain mechanisms of addiction – which are remarkably similar between rodents and humans – to develop new drug treatments. The initial research proposal is to develop a testing platform that reliably provokes key brain processes in addiction such as craving, impulsivity and stress responses that can be used to screen for new drugs that will moderate these. In the first instance we are comparing an established treatment agent (naltrexone) with two new drugs developed for other indications. Despite being developed for other indications these new drugs have potential utility in addiction because they target key brain neurotransmitters involved in addiction (dopamine and substance P).
Policy direction
The goal of our cluster is to improve treatments of addiction to reduce relapse to drug use, initially focussing on alcohol, heroin and cocaine. If the drugs we initially evaluate look positive then we are in a position to rapidly progress to clinical trials. The platform technology that we will develop to evoke and modulate brain circuits of addiction is designed to allow rapid and effective screening of new candidate drug molecules as potential anti-addiction treatments, as well as defining the circuits and neurotransmitters underpinning addiction so that new drug targets can be developed. By providing a reliable test-bed on which potential new treatments can readily be tested, we hope to encourage more pharmaceutical companies to put resources in the field of addiction treatments, which is woefully under-invested in at present. Moreover, we expect that the insights we gain into the brain regions and neurotransmitter processes of drug and alcohol addiction will be relevant to other addictive disorders such as gambling.
Co-Investigators
• T Robbins
• A Lingford-Hughes
• T Fryer
• S Knapp
• T Barnes
• B Sahakian
• J Beaver
• H Bowden-Jones
• Q Anstee
• P Tyrer
• E Rabiner
• G Gillies
• I Aigbirhio
• F Turkheimer
• L Clark
• E Bullmore
• M Crawford
• J Dalley
• T Goldstone
• H Thomas
• V De Paola
• A Milton
• M Ungless
• W Gsell
• K Ersche
• B Everitt
• W Wisden
• M Abu-Saleh
Collaborators
• W Deakin
• R Elliott
• D Stephens
• G Henderson
• E Robinson
• F Ryan