About the Alcohol Research Center
Background
The Charleston Alcohol Research Center (ARC) was first established at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) as a NIH/NIAAA-funded P50 Center in 1995. Since then, it has received continual support and was recently renewed for another 5-year funding period (2021-2025). Throughout its history, the Charleston ARC has maintained three distinct features – embracing multidisciplinary, integrative, and translationally-oriented research efforts focused on a common research theme. Key to its sustained success, the Charleston ARC has a tradition of bringing together basic researchers and clinical investigators working in a cooperative manner to address contemporary alcohol-related research. The ARC provides crucial infrastructure that facilitates bi-directional communication among investigators from varied backgrounds and disciplines, leading to creative, coordinated, and cohesive preclinical and clinical research efforts centered on a common alcohol research theme.
Overall Theme
Since its inception, the overarching research theme of the Charleston ARC has been treatment and treatment implications for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Preclinical and clinical research efforts aim to understand how heavy alcohol use/misuse produces changes in brain systems that influence motivational and decision-making processes that lead to heavy uncontrolled drinking and increased vulnerability to relapse. Understanding how frequent, excessive alcohol drinking leads to alterations in brain function is critical for advancing development of new and novel treatment strategies that reduce risk of relapse and enhance the ability to re-gain control over drinking.
Research Focus
Current research efforts are focused on elucidating neuroadaptations that mediate and/or promote transition from social, moderate drinking to excessive alcohol consumption. Multidisciplinary and innovative approaches are employed to probe mechanisms underlying changes in brain cortical systems that contribute to enhanced alcohol salience and brain reactivity as well as cortical adaptations that restrict behavioral flexibility, weaken cognitive control, and drive compulsive, habit-like alcohol-seeking and drinking behaviors.
- Basic research projects use sophisticated cellular and molecular biology techniques to examine how chronic alcohol exposure alters functional activity of cell subpopulations within cortical regions and their projections that are relevant to behavioral control and motivational effects of alcohol.
- Clinical projects employ sophisticated neuroimaging techniques to focus on similar cortical areas and projections in evaluating the ability of different treatment modalities (pharmacological and non-pharmacological) to alter relevant circuitry and reduce alcohol cue-induced brain activation, craving, and drinking.
Research conducted in the Charleston ARC focuses mainly on the addressing the following questions:
- How does drinking become more habit-like and compulsive
- How does drinking alcohol come to be more preferred than other activities and rewards
- How does frequent and heavy alcohol use result in a chronic negative emotional state
- How does chronic alcohol use compromise executive function and reduce capability to control drinking?
The common underlying premise of all research projects in the Center is that progression of alcohol addiction is characterized by adaptations in brain cortical circuits and processes that contribute to enhanced alcohol reward salience as well as impaired executive (cognitive) function that results in excessive, compulsive-like drinking. Collectively, research efforts in the Center reflect the multidisciplinary, integrative, and translational nature of the Center, capitalizing on a wide variety of contemporary experimental approaches to address a common research focus and overall theme of the ARC.
Center Philosophy
Our Center philosophy is that alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a brain disorder, having a biological basis with neuroanatomical, neurochemical, genetic, and behavioral underpinnings. The Center’s motto, "focused on treatment through research" reflects our general belief that significant advancements in the field can best be realized by coordinated and integrated research efforts in both preclinical and clinical investigatory domains. In this vein, the Center fosters a collaborative research environment that facilitates bi-directional communication and coordination between basic research and clinical investigations. The overall goal is to coordinate and enhance research efforts that lead to the development of new and more effective treatments for those suffering with alcohol use disorder.
Leadership
Howard Becker Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Howard C. Becker serves as the Director of the ARC and Director of the Administrative Core, a position he has held since 2012. He holds the academic position of Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at MUSC, and Senior Research Career Scientist in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Becker also serves as Scientific Director of the NIAAA-supported multi-site Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism – Stress (INIAstress) Consortium, which is focused on elucidating mechanisms underlying alcohol-stress interactions. He has over a 30-year history of research, leadership, and service to the alcohol field. He is nationally and internationally recognized for his research contributions in the area of animal models of alcohol dependence and relapse behavior, mechanisms underlying excessive drinking, and research devoted to discovery and evaluation of potential new therapeutics for the treatment of AUD. Dr. Becker’s research accomplishments and national reputation, coupled with his demonstrated leadership skills, broad knowledge of preclinical-clinical translational issues in the alcohol field, and his continued devotion to the overall mission and vision of the Center, make him ideally suited to serve as Director of the Charleston ARC.
Raymond Anton, M.D.
Co-Scientific Director
Dr. Raymond F. Anton, a Distinguished University Professor at MUSC, continues to serve as the Scientific Director of the ARC. Dr. Anton is a biological psychiatrist who has worked in the area of alcohol research for over 30 years. He is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in pharmacotherapies for AUD. He was a pioneer in correlating biological markers for drinking (e.g., CDT) with self- and collateral reports, and he has adopted/developed clinical laboratory procedures that incorporate sophisticated neuroimaging approaches and pharmacogenetic analyses that enable more refined evaluation of therapeutics. He has maintained a consistent record of active funding from NIAAA, and he has worked with the pharmaceutical industry in conducting various clinical trials focused on treatment for AUD. Dr. Anton has the academic credentials, leadership experience, and scientific reputation in the alcohol research field to continue in the role of Scientific Director for the Charleston ARC.
John Woodward, Ph.D.
Co-Scientific Director
Dr. John J. Woodward serves as the Co-Scientific Director. He is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at MUSC. He is highly regarded as a leader in the alcohol field, having over 30-years of experience in conducting molecular, neurophysiological, neurochemical, and behavioral studies on mechanisms of alcohol’s actions. Dr. Woodward has a broad perspective on the value of translational approaches to research in the field, having served as Director of the ARC Pilot Project Core for the past 10 years and Director of the NIAAA-funded Institutional (T32) Training grant since 2003. His long- standing research and administrative contributions to the ARC make him well suited to fulfill this role along with Dr. Anton. Further, Drs. Becker, Anton, and Woodward have a long history of working together on numerous collaborative research projects as well as providing scientific oversight and management of Center activities. Together they make an exceptionally well-qualified team to lead the scientific efforts in the Charleston ARC.
Patrick Mulholland, Ph.D.
Pilot Core Director
Dr. Patrick J. Mulholland is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at MUSC and serves as Director of the ARC Pilot Core. He is a basic science alcohol researcher with expertise in neurobiological mechanisms of chronic alcohol actions on the structure and function of brain neurons and circuitry. His research employs numerous cutting-edge technologies that provide new insights about neuroadaptations resulting from chronic alcohol exposure.
Sudie Back, Ph.D.
Pilot Core Director
Dr. Sudie E. Back serves as the Pilot Core Co-Director. She is Professor of Psychiatry at MUSC and a Staff Psychologist at the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Charleston, SC. She brings expertise in the treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and co-occurring psychiatric conditions, and her research includes behavioral and pharmacological treatments for AUD, as well as the application of laboratory paradigms and neuroimaging methodologies. Their distinct, yet complementary academic backgrounds and research experience make this an outstanding team to lead the ARC Pilot Core is attaining its important aims and goals.
Locations & Contacts
The Charleston Alcohol Research Center is located within the Institute of Psychiatry on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). MUSC is located in the heart of downtown Charleston and has occupied its present location, near the Ashley River, since 1913. During that time, it has grown from a single building to a complex encompassing over three million square feet of space for teaching, research, and patient care.
Mailing Address
Medical University of South Carolina
Institute of Psychiatry
67 President Street
4 North
MSC864
Charleston, SC 29425
Contact
Nancy White
843-792-6370
whitena@musc.edu
The Program Advisory Committee provides scientific quality control, scientific direction, and scientific interchange. The committee meets annually to review the progress of Research Components and Pilot Projects. The Board members and their university affiliations are listed below.
Advisory Committee
Joyce Besheer, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
jbesheer@med.unc.edu
Patricia H. Janak, Ph.D.
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
patricia.janak@jhu.edu
Henry R. Kranzler, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Director of Center for Studies of Addiction
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
kranzler@mail.med.upenn.edu
David M. Lovinger, Ph.D.
Chief, Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience
Division of Intramural Clinical and Basic Research
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/NIH
Bethesda, Maryland
lovindav@mail.nih.gov
Stephanie O’Malley, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry
Deputy Chair, Clinical Research
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, Connecticut
stephanie.omalley@yale.edu
Elliot A. Stein, Ph.D.
Chief, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Addiction Section
Intramural Research Programs
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Baltimore, Maryland
estein@mail.nih.gov
Robert Swift, M.D. Ph.D.
Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior
Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
robert_swift_md@brown.edu
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