# Center for Opioid and Cocaine Addiction (COCA)

> **NIH NIH P50** · MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA · 2022 · $1,960,371

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY - Overall
The personal, social and criminal consequences of opioid and cocaine abuse are enormous
problems in North America. This is most tragically seen in rising morbidity due to heroin,
prescription opioids and fentanyl overdose in the USA. Addiction to drugs typically cycles
between three phases, active drug use, withdrawal from drug use and relapse to drug use. A
point in the cycle of addiction where pharmacological intervention can be particularly beneficial
is to interfere with the overwhelming motivation by addicts to relapse to drug use, even after
extended periods of abstinence when acute withdrawal symptoms have dissipated. However,
the enduring state of relapse vulnerability arises from interdependent brain adaptations
produced during all three phases of addiction. Thus, in order to develop biological rationales for
treating relapse, it is necessary to understand not only the neurobiology of relapse itself, but to
determine which changes produced by drug administration and drug withdrawal contribute to
the final enduring state of relapse vulnerability. The overarching goal of the Center for Opioid
and Cocaine Addiction (COCA) is to create and maintain mechanisms of scientific synergy that
will facilitate discovering the neuropathologies that underpin the enduring and uncontrollable
drive to seek opioids and cocaine, and thereby advance biological rationales needed to
efficiently generate pharmacotherapies that inhibit drug relapse.
This goal will be achieved through a bidirectional translational strategy that involves 3 Cores
and 4 research Projects. In addition to the Administrative and Pilot Cores, the Animal &
Validation Core makes available transgenic rodents that have been trained to self-administer
heroin or cocaine, and have been instrumented with intracranial cannulae, fiber optics or GRIN
lens. This Core will also validate all viral reagents and transgenic animals shared by the COCA
Cores and Projects. The 4 Projects range from determining the epigenetic substrates of long-
lasting drug-induced alterations to understanding the molecular and brain circuit mechanisms of
cue-induced drug seeking in rodents and humans. The Projects are designed to be highly
integrated and form a bidirectional translation strategy for providing biological rationales for new
therapeutic approaches to relapse prevention.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10404580
- **Project number:** 5P50DA046373-04
- **Recipient organization:** MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
- **Principal Investigator:** Peter W Kalivas
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $1,960,371
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-15 → 2024-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10404580

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10404580, Center for Opioid and Cocaine Addiction (COCA) (5P50DA046373-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10404580. Licensed CC0.

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