UCLA Affiliates

UCLA Center for Addictive Behaviors
UCLA Center for Community Health/CHIPTS
UCLA Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology

UCLA Center for Addictive Behaviors
The mission of the Center for Addictive Behaviors is to discover fundamental mechanisms that link addictive disorders (drug abuse and smoking) and their behaviors with neurochemical phenotype and genotype in healthy individuals and in those who suffer from neuropsychiatric diseases. The Center’s work focuses on two major areas:

• Research on the biological basis of addictive disorders
• Development of new probes for noninvasive imaging, including methods to visualize gene expression.

The Center uses cutting-edge noninvasive in vivo imaging techniques in its research, placing it at the forefront of drug addiction behavioral research.

For more information, visit Center for Addictive Behaviors.

UCLA Center for Community Health/CHIPTS
The mission of the UCLA Semel Institute’s Center for Community Health (CCH) is to advance the understanding of children and adults in high-risk situations and to improve their health, development, and quality of life. The Center conducts research that crosses three significant areas impacting these individuals: HIV, mental health, and chronic illness. A primary component of CCH is the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services (CHIPTS), an HIV core support research center funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. CHIPTS is a partnership of UCLA, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, Friends Research Institute, and RAND that facilitates science, supports community and investigator partnerships, and disseminates research findings. ISAP researchers involved in CHIPTS are Drs. Debra A. Murphy and Cathy Reback (Intervention Core Scientists).

For more information, visit http://chipts.ucla.edu.

UCLA Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology
The Stefan and Shirley Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology focuses on research concerned with addictive drugs, including opioids, nicotine, and psychostimulants. It is also home to the Center for Opioid Receptors and Drugs of Abuse (CSORDA), which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The research objectives of CSORDA are to gain insights into the mechanisms of action of endogenous opioids and opioid drugs at their cognate receptors, with the goal of discerning fundamental processes contributing to behaviors such as analgesia, addiction, tolerance, and withdrawal. The Center has four integrated components that investigate the activity of opioid ligands at the molecular, cellular, and behavioral levels utilizing complementary methodologies and shared resources.