NIH R01 · 2025
PROJECT ABSTRACT Fentanyl addiction is a highly heritable disease and a critical public health crisis. In 2022, fentanyl overdose was the leading cause of death for US adults aged 18 - 45. This striking statistic underscores the urgent need to discover and characterize the genetic drivers of fentanyl addiction. In this regard, drug-induced incentive sensitization in brain reward systems is a fundamental addiction vector. This hypothesis (the incentive sensitization theory of addiction) posits that, over time, brain reward systems become hypersensitized to the environmental stimuli that accompany drug use. The consequence is pathological incentive motivation (i.e., “wanting”) for the drug…
From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.