VCU Professor Receives NIH MERIT Award to Extend Research of Substance Abuse Behaviors

By Sathya Achia Abraham

A Virginia Commonwealth University researcher studying the underlying causes of substance abuse behavior has been awarded a five-year grant extension totaling nearly $2.5 million from The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Michael C. Neale, Ph.D, a professor of psychiatry and human genetics at VCU, studies the nature and causes of substance abuse disorders and how genetics and environmental factors may lead some people to drug use. The NIH MERIT - Method to Extend Research in Time – award will extend to 10 years a research project that began last year.

“We still do not know why people become addicted to drugs or what leads to many psychiatric disorders,” said Neale, the principal investigator of the study. “Understanding the developmental course of substance use and abuse and the variation therein is critical, and the goal of this study is to help us measure and classify a person’s risk for substance use disorder and to identify its causes.

“Ultimately, we intend to translate our findings into clinical practice to better assess individual patterns of substance use and abuse, which should lead to improved treatments and interventions,” he said.

Neale and his colleagues are examining twin research datasets from the Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry and the Netherlands Twin Study to determine how genes and the environment may influence substance use patterns. They are creating models of substance use and implementing them in computer software. These computer programs are then used to measure how well different theories explain observed individual differences in susceptibility to, and experience with substance use and abuse.

The NIH’s MERIT award program provides top researchers more time to focus on research without the administrative burdens of preparing and submitting applications for a research extension. The four- or five-year extensions may be granted to the top 1 or 2 percent of grants.

Neale is collaborating with Brian Flaherty, Ph.D., professor at the University of Washington; Gitta Lubke, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame; and Dorret Boomsma, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Biological Psychology at the Free University in Amsterdam, where Neale has a secondary appointment as professor of statistical methodology for behavior genetics.

Neale received his doctoral degree in psychology from the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London. He has published over 200 scientific works throughout his career and is a recipient of numerous awards, including the James Shield award for outstanding contribution to twin research and the Fulker Award of the Behavioral Genetics Association.