Center Line Newsletter

Volume 19, Number 1, March 2008

Director's Column

Dr. Fulton T. Crews
Director, Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies

The Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies mission is to do basic and clinical research on the causes, prevention and treatment of problems caused by alcohol abuse and alcoholism. The NIAAA Alcohol Research Center grant is a key element in carrying out this mission. The Center grant brings our faculty together better than any other factor. The structured meetings on research findings and methodology promote discovery among multiple laboratories increasing productivity and discovery by all. Collaborations bubble up between experts in behavior and experts in neurobiology and genetics. The Center grant is a catalyst of our science that synergizes innovation, increasing productivity and making discovery more fun.

The Center Grant also is the basis and an important resource for much of our outreach activities. Leadership across communities is essential if the Center is going to use its scholarship to improve prevention, diagnosis, intervention and treatment. These efforts, ranging from youth to health professional students to treatment professionals, open new opportunities. Discoveries in the basic science laboratory need to be translated to clinical studies, which when successful need to be translated to science-based treatment protocols to be followed by the majority of clinicians, not just those at the Medical School. Our research covers a spectrum of alcohol-related biological and environmental risk factors that induce pathological behaviors as well as tolerance, withdrawal and neurobiological changes in addiction. This new knowledge represents unique targets, each of which could be used to reduce risk or treat alcohol addiction. The Center grant provides not only the unifying research themes that are poised to understand the elements of risk for dependence but also provides for educating therapists on these discoveries.

In closing, I would like to congratulate my faculty in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies for the success of their collaborative research efforts. We are grateful to our scientific advisory board, Drs. Charness, Diamond, Ehlers, Harris, Hoek and Randall, for their continuous advice, critiques and discussion of our research strategies. We thank the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for 15 years of support of our Center grant. It is our hope that we will make major discoveries over the next five years that translate to better health for all.