UCLA and Community Affiliates

The UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs’ collaborations with the ­following affiliates at UCLA and in the community are vital to realizing our goal of fully integrating substance abuse research, training, and treatment.

UCLA Affiliates

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 http://www.semel.ucla.edu/cab/.

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 R. Drew University, RAND, and California State University, Long Beach, 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 Shirley and Stefan Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology focuses on the neurochemical underpinnings of behaviors related to substance abuse and aspects of mental illness. The Center studies opioid receptors, nicotinic receptors, and neurotransmitter transporters at the molecular level and uses cellular and ­animal models to study the circuitry and behaviors these proteins regulate. The research integrates faculty expertise spanning molecular to behavioral approaches, with the broad goal of understanding how perturbation of neuronal receptors and transporters translates to modulation of behavior.
Accomplishments of faculty in the Center have included:

• Identification of the genes encoding opioid and nicotinic receptors,
• Elucidation of aspects of brain circuitry involved in reward,
• Understanding modification of ­memory circuitry via drugs of abuse,
• Identification of key regulatory ­processes of receptors and transporters in both ­opioid and monoaminergic transmission.
  
  For more information, visit http://www.semel.ucla.edu/hatos/.

Community Affiliate

Friends Research Institute, Inc.
Friends Research Institute (FRI) has provided administration of national and international research and grants for more than 50 years. That history includes a 34-year collaboration with ISAP Director Dr. Walter Ling and a 19-year ­history with ­Associate Director Dr. Richard Rawson. Working with investigators west of the Mississippi, FRI-West Coast provides research administration on varied projects, from biomedical to behavioral, including substance abuse treatment methodologies. Several FRI researchers, including Drs. Donnie Watson and Cathy Reback, have collaborated with UCLA investigators to develop cutting-edge treatment and research programs.

For more information, ­visit www.friendsresearch.org.