This T32 application, the Center for Drug Discovery “Training Program on Medications Development for
Substance Use Disorder (SUD)”, is to provide broad training to PhD students and postdoctoral scientists on drug
development for SUD. The Training Program rationale is driven by the socioeconomic burden and medical need
associated with the lack of safe and effective medicines to treat SUD in the US and globally. The Training
Program blends mentorship, coursework, and research activities in a setting with state-of-the-art facilities. The
goal of training is to equip trainees to develop as productive biomedical research scientists, with consummate
expertise in SUD pharmacotherapies research. The main locus of this training program is the Center for Drug
Discovery (CDD) at Northeastern University that has unique technologies housed in one cohesive unit, including,
high-throughput synthetic chemistry and pharmacological activity screening; mass spectrometry-based
genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, as well as, bioanalytical analysis; high-resolution NMR technologies;
and in vivo MRI imaging. Notably, CDD Training Program faculty includes SUD researchers at Harvard Medical
School and McLean Psychiatric Hospital, as well as, at Tufts University and Medical Center. Moreover, CDD
Training Program consultants include drug development scientists from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology
industrial community in Boston. All participating institutions are within an 8-mile radius of each other in the
metropolitan Boston area. The Training Program presents a premiere discovery and translational node to
address the appalling morbidity and mortality associated with apparent lack of effective medications for opioid
use disorder and complete absence of approved medications for SUD associated with cannabinoids and
psychostimulants—it appears that repurposing of old drugs has not worked and the lack of novel medicines from
pharmaceutical industry and federal laboratories provides strong rationale for our academic-based training
program on novel medication development for SUD, with its unique multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional
approach. A unique feature of the Training Program is engagement of junior faculty, including, from the
Medications Development Branch of the NIDA Intramural Program, to provide for the next generation of SUD
medication development scientists. Training Program faculty assist pre- and postdoctoral trainees to develop
scientific integrity, collaboration, grantsmanship, and presentation skills, as well as, expertise in methodologies,
including, synthetic chemistry, molecular and behavioral pharmacology, drug pharmacokinetics and metabolism,
“omics” (pharmacogenomics, proteomics, metabolomics), and neuroimaging. In addition to core research ethics
training, there will be ethics roundtable discussions. Some other features of the Training Program include
postdoctoral–predoctoral trainee collaboration, a trainees’ seminar series, and trainee engagement with SUD
scientists at the annual CDD/NIDA-sponsored symposium, Chemistry and Pharmacology of Drug Abuse.