This is an request for a K05 Senior Scientist Award to permit the candidate to continue his career development in drug abuse research. During the past ten years as a K02 awardee the candidate has spent 80-85 percent of his time engaged in drug abuse research. His overall research goal is to use multiple tools to study reinforcing efficacy, polydrug abuse and potential pharmacotherapies for drug and alcohol abuse. The research plan is based on three currently funded R01 grants on which the candidate is the Principal Investigator and three additional grants on which he serves as co-investigator. The candidate's research directives have recently changed by focusing all of his energy on clinical research and has eliminated his involvement in non human primate research. This decision was made partly because of recommendations made during the last competitive review of his K02 application and partly because the candidate has now become a senior scientist in the field of human psychopharmacology. This change in his status in the field has prompted a shift to developing an independent research program that also will support the training of predominantly women and minority students/postdoctoral fellows. The candidate continues to use electroencephalographic activity, physiological activity, plasma drug levels and instrumental measures of subjective mood states as dependent variables to quantify the effects of cocaine, marihuana and ethanol in adult volunteers. The candidate's funded grants focus on the effects of drugs of abuse in women, and is currently studying the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effects of cocaine in individuals of different ethnic backgrounds. The candidate has made a strong commitment to research and over the next five years of his professional growth he will study the similarities between cocaine- and tobacco-related cues and their effects on brain electrical activity, quantify sex-related differences in the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic response to i.v. and i.n. cocaine, evaluate the usefulness of nicotine and estrogen transdermal patches as potential pharmacotherapies for cocaine abuse, co-register EEG data with three dimensional MRI and study the effects of a Chinese herbal medicine, kudzu, as a possible treatment for alcohol abuse. The present application is being sought to provide the candidate with continued stability of support essential for his sustained commitment to research in the field of drug abuse and to ensure his continued high level of productivity not only as a senior scientist, but as a mentor for the next generation of drug abuse scientists.
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