Joao P. De Aquino, MD, Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry, has been awarded a K23 career development award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA).
The grant, "Cannabidiol Pharmacotherapy for Comorbid Opioid Addiction and Chronic Pain," aims to establish a translational paradigm to develop novel medications that target both opioid use disorder and chronic pain -- two conditions that often co-occur, but whose treatments, thus far, have remained siloed. De Aquino aims to develop novel therapeutics for these conditions taking into account their clinical and neurobiological overlap.
To achieve this goal, the grant will combine pain and addiction research tools -- behavioral pharmacology, computerized assessment of pain, and clinical trial techniques. The first medication investigated will be cannabidiol (CBD), a non-hedonic cannabinoid with potential analgesic and anti-craving properties, and which thereby holds promise as a two-pronged therapeutic agent for opioid addiction and chronic pain.
Further, the K23 Award builds on De Aquino's prior work on cannabinoid modulation of pain sensitivity in humans with comorbid opioid use disorder and chronic pain, funded by the Robert E. Leet and Clara Guthrie Patterson Trust Mentored Research Award.
Mentors and collaborators on the current K23 Award include Yale Department of Psychiatry faculty Mehmet Sofuolgu, MD, PhD; Mohini Ranganathan, MD; Deepak Cyril D'Souza, MD; and Ralitza Gueorguieva, PhD.
De Aquino, a graduate of the Yale Psychiatry Residency Program, Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP), and Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist with expertise in neuropsychopharmacology and experimental pain research. As a scientist, he is interested in accelerating the development of novel non-opioid therapeutics for both opioid addition and chronic pain, a strategy that is likely to reduce persistently high rates of relapse and save lives.
The grant discussed in this article was awarded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1K23DA062682-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.