Our Mission

Our mission is to develop molecularly-informed diagnostics and treatment strategies for Alcohol Use Disorder and comorbid conditions. We use a range of molecular techniques and experimental paradigms to discover and validate genomic biomarkers underlying different patterns of alcohol use, response to treatment with various pharmacologic agents and placebo effects in individuals with substance use disorders or in heavy social drinkers. The molecular techniques that we currently use include targeted PCR-based genotyping assays, DNA sequencing, cellular and circulating RNA sequencing of samples collected in different experimental trials and population-based studies, and primary and secondary cell culture techniques.