# Transcriptional, functional, and circuit profiling at single cell resolution of neuronal ensembles engaged by heroin relapse

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2022 · $588,807

## Abstract

Abstract:
Opiate addiction extorts a tremendous toll on society, but a mechanistic understanding of how repeated exposure
to opioids such as heroin ultimately results in compulsive drug-taking and -seeking behavior in some individuals,
but not others, is still not known. A longstanding idea is that enduring changes in neural circuit function occur
because of drug-induced gene expression changes in certain brain cells. This facilitates subsequent drug-taking
and -seeking behaviors in vulnerable individuals. Unfortunately, identifying cell-type specific alterations following
drug use (typically performed in established animal models of addiction), is generally a slow and tedious process
as changes in gene expression following in vivo drug exposure are typically assayed in series, within
heterogeneous brain regions, in an a-priori hypothesis driven fashion (i.e. previous knowledge predicting a
specific gene may be involved). This dramatically limits the throughput of data collection and likely complicates
the subsequent interpretation as gene expression patterns data are typically captured from thousands to millions
of homogenized cells. Given that the nervous system is composed of highly heterogeneous tissue, re-assessing
cell type specific gene expression changes in an unbiased manner from 1000's of individual cells is desperately
needed. Here, we propose to combine our expertise in order to generate comprehensive datasets aimed at
understanding how single-cell gene expression, circuit connectivity, and neural activity patterns are impacted by
previous drug-taking behavior. These data will provide a much-needed cellular atlas and resource for the
addiction neuroscience community and will likely lead to the identification of many novel cell type, gene
expression changes, and ensembles that can be leveraged for future study.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10434119
- **Project number:** 5R01DA054317-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Susan Marie Ferguson
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $588,807
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-07-01 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10434119

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10434119, Transcriptional, functional, and circuit profiling at single cell resolution of neuronal ensembles engaged by heroin relapse (5R01DA054317-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10434119. Licensed CC0.

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