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At Rutgers, the Rapid COVID-19 Test Was Just the Beginning

Posted on by Tahjaun Clarke

The Rutgers Institute for Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases made worldwide news last year when its researchers developed a multivariant COVID-19 test that was faster, easier and cheaper than anything previously available. Now leaders of the institute believe Rutgers researchers are poised to make far greater contributions to global health in years to come.

Ongoing projects seek to produce everything from revolutionary allergy treatments to rapid tests for other pathogens to high-tech bandages designed to make wounds heal faster and better.

Nicholas Bessman, a recent recruit from Cornell University, is researching a nutritional treatment that would fight cancer and inflammatory bowel disease by creating a healthier gut microbiome. Karen Edelblum, a researcher recruited from the University of Chicago, has identified an immune cell population in the intestinal barrier that may be targeted for the treatment of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Mark Siracusa, originally recruited from the University of Pennsylvania, has recently formed a company called NemaGen that is marketing a novel treatment that targets mast cells to control severe allergic reactions, Their different projects all share a similar basic strategy: targeting harmful components of the immune system while favoring the beneficial functions that guard against infectious diseases.

“We’re at this incredible period in history when advances in our fundamental understanding of both infection and inflammation give us an unprecedented opportunity to create better more personalized treatments for a wide range of conditions: AIDS, malaria, influenza, diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease and many more,” said William C. Gause, director of the institute and a Rutgers professor of medicine and a senior associate dean for research.

“We saw both this big opportunity for innovation and a relative lack of research organizations in the space, so Rutgers jumped in with both feet and launched the institute as a major initiative in 2016,” Gause said. “Our team has been doing important work from the start, but after six years of both internal and external recruiting, we have assembled a large team of brilliant people, and the pace of innovation continues to accelerate.”

So far, the institute has expanded from just an idea to 53 full faculty members and about 150 associate faculty members, most of whom also have appointments in other Rutgers schools. Collectively, institute faculty attract about $70 million in annual funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to one of four distinct centers:

  • Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens
  • Center for Immunity and Inflammation
  • Public Health Research Institute (PHRI)
  • Center for Covid Response and Pandemic Preparedness (CCRP2)

The institute has also just launched the new Center for Virus-Host-Innate-Immunity (CVHII) and a new program in neuroinflammation that will operate in collaboration with the Rutgers Brain Health Institute.

External seminar series, journal clubs, data clubs and working lab meetings — many of which are open to researchers throughout Rutgers — have promoted extensive cross-laboratory collaborations that have attracted multi-investigator NIH grants.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the dangers of infectious disease apparent to all, but the institute’s founders were discussing these dangers and advocating potential solutions long before COVID-19 even existed.

Indeed, early documents from the institute now seem prescient. A PowerPoint presentation Gause gave at several meetings in 2018 predicted the institute would be able to help global health by developing novel rapid diagnostic tests for rapidly spreading pathogens. In 2021, a team led by David Alland, who directs both the PHRI and the CCRP2, did exactly that.

The test, which Rutgers made freely available worldwide, was the first COVID-19 test to use “sloppy molecular beacon probes,” which are highly sensitive and specific DNA sequences used to detect frequent mutations in organisms. It was developed and validated in just a few weeks.

“We are well positioned to develop many other tools of equal or greater impact,” said Alland, who also is chief of the division of infectious diseases at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. “We have a great team and great facilities as well, including some that are truly rare, like an NIH-funded regional biocontainment laboratory — one of 12 in the US — where research on highly infectious select pathogens can be conducted in biosafety level 3 laboratory conditions. That’s a pretty nice thing to have when you’re doing infectious disease research.”

 

Story originally appeared in Rutgers Today.

New Frontiers in Drug Research and Cancer Surgery

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey has added another startup to its current portfolio of 94.

The university has signed an exclusive license with the startup NanoInk Imaging, which is advancing an optical imaging technology based on Rutgers’ patented nanoprobes that enable imaging in the short-wave infrared range. Imaging over this new optical window provides target-specific, high contrast visualization of small tumors.

NanoInk’s first platform will be focused on the pre-clinical research and drug discovery market, where the technology would enable researchers to better monitor tumor responses to experimental drugs in small animal tumor models. According to the company’s website, this would provide stronger therapy-response correlations as well as improved reliability and replicability in preclinical research, thus speeding up the drug discovery process.

The second strategic direction will be in the clinical space, where the technology will help guide cancer surgeons in the OR by allowing them to better visualize cancers and tumor margins, thus improving the quality of cancer surgery outcomes and reducing re-operation rates.

“NanoInk Imaging is working to change how cancer is researched and surgically treated,” said Tatiana Litvin-Vechnyak, PhD, Associate Vice President of Innovation Ventures, the technology transfer team within Rutgers’ Office for Research that negotiated the license with NanoInk. “The technology originated at Rutgers and the company’s leadership is working closely with the university to further develop it. It’s an example of how Rutgers’ innovation ecosystem nurtures and supports entrepreneurs and developing companies as they find solutions to the world’s challenges.”

The NanoInk team was supported by Innovation Ventures to participate in several entrepreneurial training and accelerator programs, including the TechAdvance™ fund and NSF’s I-Corps program at Rutgers and nationally as well as Berkeley SkyDeck and NIH’s C3i programs. The technology that was licensed to the company is being further developed in part through HealthAdvance™, a gap funding program co-sponsored by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) to Rutgers.

This support allowed the team to understand the commercial potential of the technology and its ability to address unmet needs in the marketplace. Moving forward, NanoInk is planning to leverage the resources and expertise available within the university’s ecosystem, including Rutgers School of Engineering, Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and the Molecular Imaging Core, to further de-risk this technology and put together a compelling story for potential investors and partners.

The nanoprobes were conceived by Rutgers inventors Prabhas Moghe, PhD and Richard Riman, PhD, both Distinguished Professors in the School of Engineering. Other key contributors were Charles Roth, PhD, professor at Rutgers School of Engineering; post-doctoral engineering fellow Mei-Chee Tan, PhD, currently a faculty at the Singapore University of Technology and Design; and Dominik Naczynski, a graduate alumnus of Rutgers.

“Innovation Ventures has been instrumental in the launch of the company,” said NanoInk founders Mark Ravera, PhD/MBA and Ameena Alam-Moghe, MS/MBA, both Rutgers alums. “It was at the I-Corps Site program at Rutgers where we started to build a business model and define the market potential of the technology. Being able to participate in all of these programs allowed us to conduct a strong diligence process on the imaging technology for both the clinical and drug discovery markets prior to licensing.”

“Nanoink’s technology is a great success story coming out of Innovation Ventures’ gap funding programs,” said Pragati Sharma, PhD, Associate Director of Commercialization Funding, part of Innovation Ventures. “In addition to providing funding for development work, this service helps the innovators gather critical input from interactions with industry reviewers as well as feedback from expert mentors engaged by the programs.”

 

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01HL150852. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of   the National Institutes of Health

Story originally appeared in Rutgers Research.

Welcome to Camp Lab Coat

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

“What did we learn yesterday?” asks Rashade Haynes II as he kicks off the final day of a weeklong summer camp focused on science education for 23 middle schoolers from the Newark area.

Rashade Haynes II CC’02, a senior principal scientist for Bristol Myers Squibb, initiated the idea for the camp.

Hands of the eager young people seated before him in a Bristol Myers Squibb meeting room shoot up. “About DNA—the double helix,” one girl says. Others echo her answer.

After opening remarks, Haynes introduces two Bristol Myers Squibb medicinal chemists to the students. The scientists run through an entertaining series of experiments that cover topics such as the properties of dry ice, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and liquid nitrogen. They also use leaf blowers to show air pressure and demonstrate Bernoulli’s Principle, a scientific cornerstone related to flight and other functions.

John Bender, who leads the demonstrations, tells the students that although he has been a scientist for decades, he still gets excited doing the daily experiments his job requires. Earlier in the week, instructors showed the young camp-goers how the heart, lungs, and human digestive system work. “If you have curiosity for your whole life, science is where you want to be,” Bender says.

For Haynes, encouragement like this is the goal of the summer program—a partnership between Rutgers and Bristol Myers Squibb held in early August for four days at Rutgers–Newark and one day at the company’s New Brunswick location. A native of East Orange, New Jersey, Haynes received his bachelor of animal science degree at Rutgers’ Cook College in 2002 before earning a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular immunology and retrovirology at Ohio State University. Now a senior principal scientist for Bristol Myers Squibb, he engages students with the enthusiasm and charm of a beloved middle school teacher.

What it’s like to be a scientist

Haynes initiated the idea for the camp partnership between Rutgers–Newark and Bristol Myers Squibb, one of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies. “My idea was to give these young students a holistic view of what it’s like to be a scientist,” he says. “Hopefully, by osmosis, they can see themselves taking the same path.”

high school students at bristol myers squibb labSheronia Rogers, assistant dean for Rutgers–Newark’s Center for PreCollege Programs, which runs the camp, says the center serves more than 2,000 students and parents annually by facilitating various programs throughout Newark, East Orange, Orange, Irvington, and the greater Essex County area. She says the Bristol Myers Squibb STEM camp fulfills a key goal of the center. “A lot of the students that we serve from marginalized communities may not get much STEM access and exposure,” Rogers says, adding that the middle school students come from the Rutgers–Newark center’s partner schools. “STEM exposure is extremely important.”

Although for some students the camp introduces them to scientific research, for others it’s a chance to explore career possibilities. Carlos Barahona, who will be a first-year student at Cicely L. Tyson High School of Performing and Fine Arts in East Orange, is fascinated by an experiment that simulated the workings of the respiratory system. “It helped me understand how the diaphragm works and helps out the lungs,’’ says Carlos, who is considering becoming a scientist or math teacher.

He also learns from experiments that problem-solving is a big part of research. “We had to go through multiple trial and errors because some parts weren’t working out at first,’’ Carlos says.

The first four days of the camp consist of morning presentations by the company’s scientists and afternoon sessions led by Rutgers–Newark undergraduate and graduate students who guide the middle schoolers in experiments. Rogers says the diverse mix of college science majors serves as excellent examples for the middle schoolers. “They see Rutgers students and see that it’s possible for them.”

Tiffany Olivera—a Rutgers–Newark graduate student from Kearny, New Jersey, who is in her second year of study for a doctorate in chemistry—says she enjoys working with the middle schoolers. “I appreciate the diversity in this program,” says Olivera, a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from South America. “I don’t see very many brown women or Black women in the sciences. I love reaching out to these communities. I want these students to know that they shouldn’t let barriers stand in their way.”

Something to BRAG about

Haynes says this Rutgers and Bristol Myers Squibb summer camp partnership is just one example of how the university and the company work together. About three years ago, Haynes, along with his work peers and fellow Rutgers alums Austin Thekkumthala SAS’13, GSNB’15, and Dan Szatkowski CC’06, led the formation of BRAG, which stands for Bristol Myers Squibb Rutgers Alumni Group, to unite the 1,700 Rutgers alumni employed at the company.

Thekkumthala, a native of Union Township, New Jersey, who earned his undergraduate and graduate science degrees at Rutgers, worked as a security guard at Bristol Myers Squibb to help pay his way through school. While unlocking a door one day, he met a mentor who helped him land an internship which led to his full-time job as a scientist. He says volunteering his time at the camp and mentoring young people are a way to pay back the support he received. “Success comes with a moral obligation to help others,” Thekkumthala says.

Deodate Davis, an associate scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb, who previously was a research teaching specialist at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, was a co-leader of the camp and helped BRAG members organize the company’s participation. Previously, BRAG has partnered on webinars, a public health equity program, and intern recruitment. “There is so much enthusiasm to give back to the university,” says Szatkowski, who is pursuing a doctorate in toxicology at Rutgers.

Haynes says BRAG plans to work with Rutgers–Newark to build on the program’s success and will hold the camp again next year. The Bristol Myers Squibb group also is hopeful to replicate the program in partnership with Rutgers programs in Camden and New Brunswick.

John Borgese, director for career and industry engagement for the Rutgers University Alumni Association, credits several at Rutgers–Newark for supporting the camp: School of Arts and Sciences–Newark Dean Jacqueline S. Mattis; Patricia Margulies, assistant dean for development; and Steven Smith, director of corporate and foundation relations. Borgese says the Bristol Myers Squibb partnership is an excellent example of how Rutgers, as the state’s flagship university with more than 570,000 alumni, can create programs with large companies that serve common goals such as expanding diversity, building community connections, and supporting projects that serve the common good.

For more about how to get a company or organization involved, visit the Rutgers University Alumni Association’s Alumni Workplace Engagement page.

Carrie Stetler contributed to this story.

Big Ten’s One Big Week Pushes for Greater College Access

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

In the world of higher education, what force is more powerful than a united Rutgers community?

Answer: the movement that takes place when a public research powerhouse like Rutgers joins with Big Ten conference partners to create change.

Supporting talented students has always been central to the mission of each Big Ten Institution. Now, the conference is harnessing its collective energy to reshape access to higher education and build new opportunities for students from all walks of life.

With the One Big Week movement, Rutgers and its Big Ten partners are highlighting an undeniable fact: that talented students exist in every zip code and income bracket, and that no student should be denied opportunities—or be forced to take on crushing loan debt—because of those differences.

For one week, from August 31 to September 7, donors across the nation can make a tremendous impact by supporting access to quality education and student services at their favorite Big Ten school. At Rutgers, the One Big Week movement focuses on the university’s Scarlet Promise Initiative to increase opportunities for Rutgers students and those planning to attend Rutgers.

The Scarlet Promise Initiative gathers together an array of programs and funds dedicated to encouraging students as they prepare for and access a Rutgers education—and to excel both during their student years and beyond. The initiative comprises programs and funds that provide direct need-based financial aid, emergency financial support, academic counseling, food security, career counseling, and more—programs that help find, foster, and support the talent of Rutgers students throughout New Jersey and around the world.

“There is no greater calling for university communities than to make sure our students can pursue an excellent, life-changing education and the extraordinary opportunities that can come with it,” said Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway. The Scarlet Promise Initiative, which grew out of Holloway’s call for greater student support on his first official day in office, is designed to offset the realities of financing a college education today.

What does it look like to face those realities while pursuing a degree? Rutgers students receiving financial aid still have an average unmet need of more than $11,000 each year, totaling almost $400 million annually. Many wrestle with astonishing debt as they complete their degrees, often prolonging their studies well beyond the traditional four years of college. These factors limit career mobility and delay life milestones such as buying a home and starting a family.

That makes the Scarlet Promise all the more urgent. Rutgers can only fulfill this promise with philanthropic support from the full spectrum of the global Rutgers community—and through transformative movements like One Big Week. Only by acting together can the higher education community transcend the forces that historically have prevented many students from realizing their excellence and potential.

Together, the Rutgers community and the Big Ten community can produce a whole far greater than the sum of their parts. This is a hallmark of leadership—the recognition that we create more powerful change through collaboration, and that we owe it to future generations to do so.

 

To learn more and donate to One Big Week, visit support.rutgers.edu/onebigweek.

Exploring New Areas of Nursing

Posted on by Tahjaun Clarke

By Jared Brey

Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden senior Sungao Macauley had doubted herself at first, so she was thrilled to win a spot as one of seven students in the inaugural class of the school’s Undergraduate Nursing Research Fellowship program. She went on to spend six weeks over the summer working with nursing faculty on a variety of research projects that included interviewing residents of an assisted-living facility in Camden and conducting research for a project focused on climate change, health, and environmental justice. “I went to do something that I wasn’t comfortable in, and it opened up my eyes and showed me I could do a lot more than I thought I could,” Macauley says.

Macauley felt particularly inspired after assisting Mei Rosemary Fu, professor of nursing and senior associate dean for research, and Wanda Williams, a clinical associate professor whose research analyzing racial disparities in breast cancer screening in Camden is funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. Williams is a breast cancer survivor, and Macauley found it insightful to work with from someone with lived experience. She also felt motivated by learning from faculty of color who had risen to the heights of the nursing profession. “It’s different when you have somebody who looks like you, and they’ve made it so far,” Macauley says.

Fu, an accomplished nursing scholar who joined the Rutgers–Camden faculty in 2021 after posts at NYU and Boston College, founded the fellowship program to deepen undergraduate student exposure to research. All nursing students at Rutgers–Camden take a research class as part of the core curriculum, but the summer fellowship gives students a chance to dig deeper. Fellows focus on collecting, reading, and analyzing research data, and conducting literature reviews. Fu said with more research studies being conducted by nursing researchers, future fellows will be offered a comprehensive experience that will enable them to conceptualize, complete, and disseminate a study.

Aside from bringing new rigor to their research skills, Fu says, the fellowship also allows students to learn from accomplished scientists and expand their professional networks, opening up new potential avenues in their careers. Opportunities to hone professional skills included making a presentation to the senior vice president and chief nursing executive at Cooper University Health Care.

The ultimate goal of the fellowship, Fu says, is to prepare nurses to play a role in improving the overall quality of health care. “Nursing is a care profession, and you need to develop science and knowledge which are evidence-based,” she says. “That’s the major driver of nursing research—to advance the science and knowledge of patient care.”

Fundraising for year two

Fu began organizing the summer fellowship program soon after she arrived at Rutgers–Camden, raising $10,000 to support the program. That included a substantial donation of her own and significant donations from interim university Provost Donna Nickitas, formerly dean of the School of Nursing, and interim Dean of the Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden Marie O’Toole. In all, 25 donors pitched in, which allowed the school to offer each student participating a $600 stipend and free summer tuition. (Fellows earn one hour of course credit for the program.)

Fu is currently seeking donors at all levels to help expand the fellowship and is hoping that it can be offered for cohorts of up to 40 students per year in a few years. She says the program will build research capacity at the school and deepen collaborations with Rutgers and health care systems and communities, as well as prepare a new generation of nurses to provide better care. “Training students from the undergraduate level and providing opportunities for them to observe successful researchers are important for their career development,” Fu says.

Camden Nursing School
Seated, from left: Nancy Cresse, clinical assistant professor; Margaret Avallone, associate dean and clinical associate professor; Donna M. Nickitas, interim provost; Marie O’Toole, interim dean; and Daniel Fidalgo Tomé, coordinator, Engaged Civic Learning Program. Standing, from left: fellows Rachael Merrick, Skyla Mateo, and Narjis Jaffry; Mei Rosemary Fu, senior associate dean and professor; fellows Manpreet Rayjma, Samantha Lafferty, and George Gandour; and Kate Brennan, senior director for development.

How research benefits nursing

Samantha Lafferty, a junior, decided to enter the health care field partly because of her experience growing up with a grandfather who had Alzheimer’s. A project she did on genetics as a high school senior sparked her interest in the research side of the profession. She says that helping to analyze and verify data for real research projects led by Fu and others inside and outside the university was an enlightening experience. She saw it as a way to get exposure to many more patients’ perspectives than she would just by doing bedside care. “There’s always a new, better, more efficient way of doing things,” Lafferty says. “I think doing research to find out what those ways are, using evidence-based practice, really can change the way that health care is done.”

Rachael Merrick, a recent graduate who completed the fellowship, says while nursing experience makes you a better researcher, the reverse is also true—having familiarity with research and data can make you a better nurse. “I think it gives you a different edge, a different mindset,” Merrick says. “It makes you a more well-rounded nurse. You bring a different aspect to your care and working with your patients.”

The Invisible Extinction

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

Rutgers microbiologists Martin J. Blaser and Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, internationally esteemed for their pioneering work in investigating the widespread depletion in the diversity of the human microbiome, are the subject of The Invisible Extinction. The documentary chronicles the (married) couple’s research into the link between the microbiome—comprising the trillions of competing and cooperating bacteria, or microbes, teeming in and on our bodies—and diseases like diabetes, cancer, asthma, and autism. The feature-length film, which premiered at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in March, follows their efforts in advocating for the protection of the microbiome and measures that can be taken to restore lost microbiome diversity—a common malady among populations living in industrialized nations. Contributing to compromised microbiomes are factors such as the overuse of antibiotics, elective C-sections, and the consumption of processed foods. The documentary also reveals the plans of Blaser and Dominguez-Bello to create the Micro-biota Vault—an international repository, modeled after the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway—that would contain strains of all known bacteria, which could be replicated and introduced into people suffering from a depleted microbiome and related diseases.

 

Story originally appeared in Rutgers Magazine.

Stirring the Pot

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

The New Jersey State Policy Lab at Rutgers has released a report about the effects of marijuana use on health, education, and law enforcement. The report measures the impact of legalization and identifies disparities among different communities. “This analysis is critical to New Jersey, setting a model similar to other states in recognizing that all people in the state are not the same, and by legalizing cannabis, its impact on different communities is going to vary,” says Charles Menifield, the study’s principal investigator and dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration. The study uses secondary data to provide a snapshot of present-day usage and law enforcement measures across age, race, and gender lines. It also gauges youth attitudes about marijuana as well as medical and behavioral health factors that could be affected by legalization.

 

Story originally appeared in Rutgers Magazine.

Beyond the Reef

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

A popular coral restoration technique is unlikely to protect coral reefs from climate change and is based on the assumption that local threats to reefs are managed effectively, according to a study co-authored by Rutgers, Coral Research Alliance and researchers at other institutions.

The research, published in the journal Ecological Applications, explored the response of coral reefs to restoration projects that propagate corals and outplant them into the wild. Additionally, researchers evaluated the effects of outplanting corals genetically adapted to warmer temperatures, sometimes called “super corals,” to reefs experiencing climate change as a way to build resilience to warming.

The study found neither approach was successful at preventing a decline in coral coverage in the next several hundred years because of climate change and that selectively breeding corals to be more heat tolerant only will lead to benefits if conducted at a very large scale over the course of centuries.

Even then, the researchers said, the benefits won’t be realized for 200 years.

Restoring areas with corals that haven’t been selected to be more heat tolerant was ineffective at helping corals survive climate change except at the largest supplementation levels.

“Our previous research shows that corals have the best chance of adapting to the effects of climate change, like warming ocean temperatures, if there is high genetic diversity and if habitat is protected from other local stressors.” said Lisa McManus, who co-led the research and conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University and is now faculty at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology. “Repopulating a coral reef with corals that have similar genetic makeups could reduce an area’s natural genetic diversity, and therefore make it harder for all corals to adapt to climate change.”

Coral reef restoration techniques are widely applied throughout the world as a way to repopulate degraded coral reef areas. Although the practice has some benefits, such as engaging and educating communities about reef ecosystems or replenishing a coral reef population after an area has been hit by a storm or suffered direct physical damage, more scientists are speaking up about the limitations of conservation approaches that focus solely on restoration.

The authors said focusing solely on coral restoration and genetically engineering corals to be more tolerant of high temperatures is risky. Understanding of the genes that determine heat resistance remains limited and focusing on reproducing just one single trait could undermine a coral’s resilience to other stressors or its natural ability to adapt, they said.

Restoration practices also carry a hefty price tag and require a lot of resources. The median cost of restoring just one hectare (or about 2.5 acres) of coral reef has been estimated at more than $350,000, which doesn’t factor in high mortality rates that often come with such projects and the cost of genetically modifying corals.

“Coral restoration can be an important tool for conserving coral reefs, but restoration is expensive and hard. We can’t use restoration to replace the basics, like improving water quality, avoiding overfishing, and addressing climate change,” said Malin Pinsky, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

The study was co-authored by Rutgers professor Malin Pinsky, and researchers from Coral Reef Alliance, University of Washington, Stanford University, University of Queensland, University of Hawai’i and The Nature Conservancy. The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and The Nature Conservancy.

Story originally appeared in Rutgers Today.

Battling the Substance Abuse Pandemic

Posted on by Annabelle Arana-David

If, as Danielle Dick says, the brain is medicine’s last frontier, she is certainly one of its most prominent pioneers. For 20 years, she has conducted extensive research on the intersection of genetic and environmental influences on human behavior, publishing more than 350 peer-reviewed studies in child development, mental health, human and molecular genetics, human behavior, and addiction. Of the last, she says, “I like a good challenge, and there aren’t many areas as challenging—and as important—as trying to tackle addiction.” In January 2022, she was named inaugural director of the Rutgers Addiction Research Center (RARC), founded at the Rutgers Brain Health Institute to address the epidemic of substance abuse now raging across the United States.

The center will bring together and coordinate Rutgers’ vast resources in four major domains: basic science (including neuroscience, genetics, and epidemiology); prevention and intervention; treatment and recovery; and public policy. Essentially, Dick says, “The RARC will be a one-stop resource for all things addiction-related at Rutgers.” It will promote collaboration, offer start-up funds to researchers and enable them to secure funding from the National Institutes of Health, and create pipelines between researchers and addiction treatment providers. Here she talks about the complex subject of addiction and the impact the new center can have on those who struggle with it.

Historically, our country hasn’t done a good job of addressing addiction. Why is that, and do you believe it’s a problem that can be mitigated?

Historically, and tragically, we focused on criminalizing addiction and punishing individuals who suffered from substance use disorders. Fortunately, that is changing. Stigma is decreasing and people are realizing that substance use disorders are medical conditions, influenced by both genes and environments, like other common complex biomedical conditions, like cardiovascular disease. Because substance use disorders and related mental health conditions affect so many of us—one in four adults will be affected—it’s a moral imperative that we do a better job of tackling addiction. The RARC will play a critical role in the fight against addictive disorders by advancing research on the biological and social processes that contribute to risk, and using this knowledge to develop more effective prevention, treatment, and public policy. I am also passionate about researchers doing more to get scientific advances to the people who can use them. I wrote a book for parents, The Child Code: Understanding Your Child’s Unique Nature for Happier, More Effective Parenting (Avery, 2021). It helps parents understand how their children’s genetic codes impact their behavior and how we can use that information to help stop problems before they begin.

You note that environmental factors and genetics can predispose a person to addiction. How do we know a genetic element is involved in addiction?

We’ve known for a long time that substance use disorders run in families, but that can’t tell us whether it’s due to shared genes or shared environmental factors. The way we estimate the degree of genetic influence is through twin and adoption studies. Hundreds of thousands of twins have been studied on virtually every outcome you can think of. And we’ve seen that identical twins, who share their full DNA sequence, are far more likely to share a tendency toward addiction (or lack thereof) than fraternal twins, who share on average just 50 percent of their DNA variation. And in studies of adopted children and their birth parents, it’s been repeatedly found that kids whose biological parents had substance use problems or other psychiatric conditions were much more likely to have those problems. Having an adoptive parent with mental health challenges raised the risk a little bit. But having a biological parent with those challenges—even one with whom children never had contact—raised the risk much more. These studies demonstrated the powerful role of our genes in addiction and mental health.

You have a special interest in substance use and mental health outcomes in youth and young adults. Why is that?

Genetic predispositions don’t just suddenly show up; no one wakes up one morning to discover they had an onset of alcohol use disorder overnight. Instead, genetic risk starts to show up as behavioral tendencies that we can see very early on in kids. Some people have brains that are more primed for “go” responses. They’re more novelty seeking; they discount long-term consequences; and they think more about the reward that’s right in front of them. This shows up initially as problems with self-regulation in children. When impulsivity goes unchecked, it can contribute to substance use and other addictive disorders. Other people have brains that tend toward worry, anxiety, and depression. These tendencies can lead to the use of substances to cope with some of these challenges. These genetic dispositions show up in children. So, the reason I’m so passionate about studying kids and youth is that the earlier we can intervene and address these dispositional traits—by teaching kids life skills to manage their tendencies—the more likely we are to reduce subsequent substance use problems.

How else might we be able to prevent substance use problems?

There are many ways we can engage in effective prevention. Programs can be targeted at individuals, helping them to understand risk and protective factors and learn about ways to reduce risk. We can also think about prevention at the level of the family, the school, or the neighborhood. We know that there is no one magic bullet to prevent addiction. We need to take a multi-pronged strategy.

How can public policy affect substance abuse?

Policy can play a powerful role in curbing substance use problems. Laws surrounding taxes, marketing, packaging, alcohol sales, and the legality of various substances can all affect rates of substance use and problems. Health care policy can play a major role in determining whether individuals who are affected are able to get the help they need. And policies surrounding programming in schools can affect whether we have the resources we need to intervene early and prevent the development of problems in our children. One of the many wonderful things about Rutgers is that we have leading researchers who study public policy. This will be an important component of the RARC.

What appears to work best for treatment?

Many evidence-based treatments are known to work, and they tend to involve combinations of medication and psychotherapy. One of the things we plan to focus on at the RARC is precision medicine. How do we tailor the right treatment to the right person at the right time?

What kind of impact do you think the RARC can have?

Rutgers is an amazing place for addiction research. We already have great researchers who are advancing our understanding of addiction through basic and applied science. We have training programs to educate students, professionals, and the community about addiction. And we have devoted clinical providers. The RARC will strategically build on this foundation to make Rutgers one of the top addiction centers in the country, and the world, for tackling substance use and other behavioral addictions. Rutgers, and New Jersey by extension, really have the opportunity to lead the way.

Story originally appeared in Rutgers Magazine.

Rutgers in the News: Summer Service, Abortion Access, and Nuclear Warfare Study

Posted on by Tahjaun Clarke

Tap Into reports on the experiences of Rutgers student Eddie Malague in the Rutgers Summer Service Initiative (RSSI) program, which helps undergraduate students expand their knowledge, skills, and civic awareness by placing them in public service-oriented, non-profit organizations and direct-service government offices. “I think I’m getting better at interacting with a whole host of different people,” says Malague about working at Elijah’s Promise community food kitchen in New Brunswick. “It’s a very diverse group of clients. I feel I’ve learned much more about myself and where I come from and what I can offer to others.”
Tap Into New Brunswick | Through New Rutgers Initiative, Intern Brings Help, Hope to Elijah’s Promise

“If being pregnant can have consequences for women’s health, one priority needs to be ensuring that women have access to health care to make sure their pregnancies are safe,” writes Rutgers University–Newark professor Vanessa LoBue in Psychology Today. “Although Americans might never come to a middle ground on the abortion issue, perhaps we can work together on strategies that can help reduce the risks for mothers and children, and support strategies that are known to make abortion less common and policies that support pregnant women who decide to carry their fetuses to term.” LaBue also examines what has happened in other countries, such as Romania, when women’s reproductive rights suddenly disappear.
Psychology Today | On Being Pro-Family

Nick Kapur, associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Camden’s College of Arts and Sciences, appears in a New York Times story on the aftermath of the assassination of Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Kapur comments on prospects for the country’s current leader, Fumio Kishida, who owes much of his success to Abe. Kishida “has some popularity and he’s going to have a majority, but as we know, there are so many economic headwinds for everyone in the world—dealing with inflation and an emerging markets debt crisis and the war in Ukraine—and maybe that would damage any leader at some point,” says Kapur.
New York Times | Shinzo Abe’s Party Triumphs in Parliamentary Vote, Extending Legacy

The New York Post looks at predictions about the unthinkably dire effects of nuclear warfare, quoting School of Environmental and Biological Sciences professor Alan Robock, who has led several studies on the subject—including one recently published in the open-access journal AGU Advances. “World leaders have used our studies previously, as an impetus to end the nuclear arms race in the 1980s and five years ago to pass a treaty in the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons,” says Robock. “We hope that this new study will encourage more nations to ratify the ban treaty.”
New York Post | Nuclear war would create ‘dire’ worldwide hellscape: scientists