UCSD - University of California - San Diego

09/30/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/30/2026 05:18

UC San Diego Receives $12.6 Million Award to Launch a New Polysubstance Addiction Research Center

Published Date

September 30, 2026

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Researchers from University of California San Diego have received a $12.6 million award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to establish the Polysubstance Addiction Research Center (PARC), a multidisciplinary center designed to uncover the biological factors that contribute to addiction across multiple substances. The five-year award will bring together researchers from psychiatry, medicine, obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences, computational biology and bioinformatics, as well as the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.

"Addiction research has traditionally been divided into separate areas - alcohol research on one side and drug research on the other," said Olivier George, PhD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of PARC. "But that division doesn't reflect how addiction occurs in the real world. People often use more than one substance, so we need to understand what these substances have in common, as well as what makes them different."

Substance use disorders remain a major public health challenge, yet much addiction research continues to focus on one substance at a time. PARC will instead study cocaine, oxycodone, alcohol and the combination of cocaine and oxycodone using a coordinated research strategy.

Olivier George, PhD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of PARC.

"Bringing psychostimulant drugs - a type of drug that speeds up the central nervous system, such as cocaine - opioids and alcohol research together in one center allows us to look across these boundaries and identify biological mechanisms that may be shared across substances," added George.

"This award is a tremendous recognition of Olivier George's leadership and his vision for bringing together researchers across disciplines to address the complexities of addiction," said Barbara Jung, MD, associate vice chancellor and dean of UC San Diego School of Medicine. "The creation of PARC strengthens UC San Diego's ability to lead collaborative, innovative research that can deepen our understanding of addiction and ultimately help identify new approaches to prevention and treatment."

The center will examine why some individuals develop more severe addiction-related behaviors than others by looking at multiple biological systems at once. Researchers will study behavior alongside changes in brain networks, gene activity and processes involving the immune system, metabolism and the gut-brain connection. Researchers will then compare findings with human genetic, brain imaging and other biological datasets to determine how changes at one biological level relate to changes at another.

"We've known for decades that genetic differences among individuals contribute to risk for addiction," said Abraham Palmer, PhD, professor and vice chair of basic research in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "PARC is using cutting-edge techniques to understand how these individual differences shape addiction risk at the molecular, cellular and brain circuit levels."

This approach is organized around the center's "One-Individual Multiscale Atlas," which will integrate information ranging from genes and individual cells to brain circuits, peripheral organs and behavior. Researchers will then compare findings with human genetic, brain imaging and other biological datasets.

The center has three interconnected research projects:

  • The brain connectomics project will examine how addiction changes the organization and communication of brain networks.
  • The brain transcriptomics project will study changes in gene activity in specific types of brain cells.
  • The gut-vagus multiomics project will investigate how the gut and vagus nerve - which connects the brain with organs throughout the body - may influence addiction-related behaviors.
Addiction research has traditionally been divided into separate areas - alcohol research on one side and drug research on the other. But that division doesn't reflect how addiction occurs in the real world. People often use more than one substance, so we need to understand what these substances have in common, as well as what makes them different. - Olivier George, PhD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of PARC

Together, the projects will support the center's first aim: identifying biological markers associated with vulnerability to addiction-related behaviors. Advanced computational and machine-learning methods will be used to integrate the different types of data and identify patterns that may help explain differences in addiction severity.

A second aim will move beyond identifying associations to test whether biological targets actually influence addiction-related behaviors. Researchers will use medications and other interventions to test potential targets identified through the center's research, including pathways involved in cellular stress, immune signaling and communication between the gut and brain.

"We want to go one step further than simply finding a biological difference associated with addiction," George said. "We want to test whether changing that biological process changes addiction-related behavior. That could help us identify targets that are more likely to translate into new treatments."

The third aim will establish infrastructure to accelerate addiction research beyond the center itself. PARC will expand its addiction biobank, which currently contains more than 40,000 specimens collected from studies of addiction-related behaviors involving cocaine, oxycodone and alcohol. The biobank has already supported 75 external research projects.

PARC will also provide researchers with access to standardized behavioral models, computational tools and shared datasets. Data will be made available through National Institutes of Health repositories to support reproducibility and enable other researchers to build on the center's findings.

The center builds on six years of collaboration among UC San Diego addiction researchers. During that time, PARC investigators have worked across more than a dozen laboratories, producing hundreds of publications and developing shared research resources. The new NIDA-funded Center will formalize and expand that collaborative model, with the goal of creating a national resource for addiction science.

By bringing alcohol and drug research together and connecting biological information across multiple levels, PARC aims to move addiction research from isolated observations toward a more integrated understanding of why addiction develops, why some people are more vulnerable than others and why relapse occurs.

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UC San Diego School of Medicine buildings. Credit: Kyle Dykes.
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