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Federal Office Gives Psychiatrist Key Addiction-Research Post

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is funding cutting-edge gene and protein analysis technology to search for the molecular causes of addiction.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC) has chosen an APA member as one of the recipients of a $5.85 million grant to investigate the genetic factors that predispose people to addiction.

Patricia Ordorica, M.D., is associate chief of staff for mental health and behavioral sciences at the James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa and clinical director of the CTAC Drug Addiction Study. She is also the director of addictive disorders and associate professor of psychiatry at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

In APA, Ordorica is chair of the APA/CMHS Minority Fellowship Selection and Advisory Committee, vice chair of APA’s Scientific Program Committee, and a member of the Vestermark Award Corresponding Committee.

As clinical director of the study, Patricia Ordorica, M.D., will oversee all administrative and clinical aspects of the drug addiction treatment research, and with principal investigator Michael Mullan, M.D., Ph.D., supervise the research components and operations. Mullan is director of the Roskamp Institute, a research facility in Tampa.

Patients with substance use disorders will be recruited from the veterans hospital and other CTAC-funded research centers in a sample that will top 1,000 patients. The research team will use the ONDCP funding to purchase the latest gene chip and protein analysis technology, which will enable them to study hundreds of thousands of human genes and the proteins expressed by those genes.

By identifying the genes and proteins activated by different drugs of abuse, the researchers hope to design a therapeutic intervention that will ultimately disrupt the addiction process.

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