Cocaine addiction is a dysfunction in the reward-related brain circuits, causing users to repeatedly seek out and take the drug.
Dr. Drew Kiraly, assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine, discusses a potential way to minimize the addict's desire for the drug.
By manipulating a key factor in the brain's process of craving cocaine, the findings suggest a new therapeutic approach to decrease a human's desire for the drug without filling the void with another dangerous substance.
The would be a first for potential cocaine addiction treatment outside of things like 12-step programs and psychotherapy. Dr. Kiraly also touches on the larger opioid epidemic and other addiction issues.
Featuring:
Drew Kiraly, MD, PhD
Dr. Drew Kiraly is a graduate of the psychiatry residency program at Icahn School at Medicine at Mount Sinai. During his residency, Dr. Kiraly served for two years as the Chief Resident for Research, and performed his research fellowship working in the lab of Dr. Eric Nestler. During his time in residency, Dr. Kiraly was being named a Leon Levy Fellow in Neuroscience as well as a Seaver Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in support of his ongoing work. Additionally he received multiple honors from outside sources including the prestigious ACNP Memorial Travel Award and the NIMH Outstanding Resident Award. As a resident, Dr. Kiraly was also actively engaged in teaching and administrative work within the program and developed a new evidence-based psychiatry curriculum for first year residents as well as creating a works-in-progress seminar series for the research track residents. Dr. Kiraly now runs the Laboratory of Translational Psychiatry at Mount Sinai. In the lab his group examines the role of neuroimmune interactions and the gut microbiome in addiction, autism spectrum disorder and depression. The goal of the laboratory is to utilize translationally-relevant animal models and samples from human subjects combined with cutting-edge molecular biology and biochemistry techniques to discover targets within the gut-immune-brain axis that have a high potential for possible future clinical translation. Work in the Kiraly Lab is being supported by recent awards of a career development award from NIDA, a NARSAD young-investigator grant, and pilot funds from the Yale/NIDA Neuroproteomics Center. Additionally, Dr. Kiraly was recently named as Nash Family Research Scholar for his cutting edge work in the laboratory. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Kiraly continues to see patients both in the psychiatric emergency rooms and inpatient units, and is actively engaged in resident and medical student education.
