UNM HSC is an Institution of Emerging Excellence in biomedical and behavioral research, and has seen dramatic growth in the research enterprise over the last 15 years. The current proposal aims to continue this trajectory by construction of a new core facility focused on substance use disorders and brain injury. Investigators at UNM, have established innovative research programs that are addressing these complex and interrelated topics, however their efforts are currently constrained by a lack of state of the art facilities. Development of effective interdisciplinary teams is also limited because our investigators and key resources are currently scattered across campus. The Interdisciplinary Substance Use and Brain Injury (ISUBI) core facility addresses these critical barriers, supports currently funded NIH investigators, and will provide a platform for generation of new programmatic research efforts. ISUBI will provide unique set of capabilities and an interactive environment that actively supports translation of basic science to clinical testing and real-world application, as a core facility available to investigators at UNM. It will also provide a valuable hub for investigators throughout our state and national research networks. The proposal is for 16,000gsf of new construction on the UNM Health Sciences Center campus. The new facility will be attached to an existing research building (Domenici Hall) that currently houses a subset of UNM HSC investigators addressing neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and neurosurgical research. The new construction will add a two-story wing to the existing building, and a key design principle for the facility is interdisciplinary interactions and cross-fertilization of ideas. This is essential to address traditional roadblocks for translational research, and ensure work from this core facility is impactful and generalizable. The ground floor is designed for state-of-the art rodent model generation, behavioral and neurophysiological analyses The modular design of the ground floor is optimized to minimize animal movement, noise and odor contamination, as well as providing efficiency for high throughput, automated studies that are needed for local investigators and attractive to outside users. Surgery and recovery resources are adjacent to holding and testing areas, with modules self-contained for individual types of injury or drug study. The upper floor is designed for the conduct of clinical studies and analysis/integration of a range of clinical and preclinical data sets that can be brought to bear on brain injury and substance use disorders. The design of the upper floor also includes specialized core resources for carefully controlled clinical studies of drug exposure, customized observation suites that simulate real-world scenarios, and collection of biological specimens and brain activity data (EEG and fNIRS). The upper floor also provides core resources for big data analysis, required for preclinical and clinical data streams focused on injury and substance use disorders. This proposal is part of the long-term commitment to development and maintenance of advanced brain research facilities at UNM HSC, and ISUBI is expected to have a powerful and sustained impact biomedical research at the institution, and regionally and nationally.
