# DELINEATING THE ROLE OF GENETIC INFLUENCES ON CANNABIS INVOLVEMENT

> **NIH NIH K02** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $119,134

## Abstract

This competing renewal of an Independent Investigator Career Development Award (K02) aims to expand the
candidate's research expertise in genetic studies of cannabis involvement in two main areas: (a) integration of
neuroimaging with emerging genomic results for cannabis involvement; and (b) new methodology for genomic
(meta) analyses, in particular, understanding how genomic factors influence the comorbidity between cannabis
involvement and psychiatric as well as psychosocial correlates. She will also work closely with leaders in the
field of big data psychiatric genetics to expand her expertise in managing consortia, developing novel
collaborations, expanding her work in a clinical direction and in dissemination and community engagement. In
addition, the candidate will continue to mentor trainees in addiction and genomic methods and maintain her
training in responsible conduct of research. The overarching goal of this K02 is to provide the candidate, a
tenured Associate Professor, with protected time to conduct research on parsing the role of genetic influences
on cannabis involvement. The public health significance of this research is particularly timely as a wave of
legislative change surrounding the status of recreational cannabis sweeps the nation and scientific interest in
the deleterious correlates and consequences of cannabis use intensifies. The candidate's research portfolio is
amongst the few that is primarily focused on genetically informed studies of cannabis involvement and
continues to inform this research debate with empirical findings. With support from the first phase of funding,
the candidate published numerous peer-reviewed studies, and generated findings documenting (a) new loci for
cannabis use disorders (CUD), (b) the role of childhood abuse on genetic risk for CUD and (c) polygenic
approaches to genetic dissection of variance in CUD. She has also renewed her existing R01 and secured
funding for two additional R01s. Most recently, she co-established the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium's
Substance Use Disorders (PGC-SUD) workgroup, a new addition to the PGC repertoire of highly powered
genomewide association meta-analytic studies. The next phase of training and collaboration will extend the
candidate's expertise in one existing (genomics) and one novel (neurogenetics) direction. First, via involvement
in the PGC, the candidate will master the most recently developed genomic methods, including integrated
approaches for bioinformatics and epigenome annotation. This will solidify her knowledge in modern genomic
methods and allow her to develop the PGC-SUD group as the foremost source for high quality SUD genetics
research. Second, the candidate will gain proficiency in neuroimaging and imaging genetics approaches to
begin to integrate her genomic discoveries with neurobiological correlates. This will effectively position the
candidate to propose cutting-edge imaging genetics research applications. Overall, continued funding wi...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9891978
- **Project number:** 5K02DA032573-09
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** ARPANA AGRAWAL
- **Activity code:** K02 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $119,134
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2012-04-15 → 2022-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9891978

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9891978, DELINEATING THE ROLE OF GENETIC INFLUENCES ON CANNABIS INVOLVEMENT (5K02DA032573-09). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9891978. Licensed CC0.

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