Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics at UIC receives $8M from NIH

The University of Illinois at Chicago received $8.2 million from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to continue the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics and its research on how alcohol affects genes through epigenetics — chemical changes to DNA, RNA or proteins that alter the expression of genes without directly modifying them.

“With this new grant, we can study how alcohol interacts with the epigenome to regulate gene function in the brain and drive the pathophysiology of alcohol use disorder, or AUD,” said Subhash Pandey, UIC professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics, or CARE. “We will use animal models of AUD to examine how these epigenetic changes mediate withdrawal symptoms and promote increased drinking. Then, this information will be translated to studies of human postmortem brain tissue from people that were suffering from an alcohol use disorder.”