Partnering with CEAS

Nora Volkow, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health offers an important message of support for the pain and addiction research partnership between OSU and the University of Arizona.

Become a Partner

Please submit to Stefanie Mitchell a one page description of your research work as it relates to impacting pain and addiction. Indicate what specific cores services you may be interested in obtaining and how it may advance your work towards subsequent grant funding for you.  

Pilot Project inquiries for University of Arizona researchers should be sent to Stephen Cowan, Ph.D. and Tim Johnstone, Ph.D..  

View Past Information and Application instructions.

Contact Us

Current Partners

Researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences and the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences recently created an innovative partnership to combat the opioid crisis and to discover and develop modern therapeutics for the treatment of chronic pain.  The Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center, a strategic initiative at UArizona Health Sciences, is composed of a group of leading scientists with expertise in the overlapping neurobiology of chronic pain and addiction whose work will be strengthened by the availability of novel chemical matter from OSU.  The Center of Excellence for Addiction Studies at UArizona Health Sciences will provide expertise in genetic targeting, the use of neuroanalytical methods, large data analysis and advanced behavioral assessment of drug-like substances, providing critical data that may lead to clinical trials.

Through biomedical and clinical research, medical education and innovative patient care, the NCWR is bringing hope to the fight against opioid use disorder.  The NCWR is focused on combating the opioid crisis, ameliorating the suffering of chronic pain while decreasing opioid use, finding alternatives to opioids for treating acute and chronic pain, promoting recovery and prevention of relapse from opioid use disorder, as well as development of rapidly acting medications for opioid overdose through advancement of novel chemistry, biology, therapies, clinical trials and education.

Partnership studies with Neugebauer, Benamar and Chattopadhyay labs at Texas Tech include work on amygdala and corticolimbic neuroplasticity in pain conditions, analgesic effects of the constituents of Cannabis plant (e.g. beta-caryophyllene, pinene, CBD) and the role of histone deacetylases in painful diabetic neuropathy.  Use of CEAS core services includes novel object recognition and conditioned place preference tests from the behavioral core, cell-type specific visualization and modulation from the genetic core and transmitter/neuropeptide levels/release in the amygdala and interacting regions.

Partnership studies with the Clark, Milligan and Valenzuela labs includes work on the neurobiology of navigation and memory and the role of thalamo-parietal circuitry in spatial navigation and memory, the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on central nervous system immune function and protracted neuropathy following acute opioid exposure in adult offspring.  Use of CEAS core services includes utilizing the behavioral animal core to broaden the potential regions in the central nervous system that become susceptible to opioid dysregulation as a consequence of prenatal alcohol exposure, testing animals in the Barnes maze, providing expertise in neglect/nesting/grooming, reduced engagement and social defeat.  The genetic modulation core will implement optogenetic methods to examine spinal and brainstem neuronal responses to immune cytokines known to be dysregulated in prenatal alcohol exposed offspring and the impact of alcohol exposure on neuronal circuit development.  The neuroanalytical core is anticipated to measure neurochemical effects in each research project.