About the Institute

A very significant incidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) and major depression is now being seen among veterans and active duty military personnel. These diagnoses are strongly impacted by high frequencies of comorbid Alcohol and Substance Use Disorders (AUDs and SUDs).  The impact of comorbid AUDs/SUDs is magnified through their interference with treatment regimens for comorbid PTSI, major depression, and other psychological health conditions.  Research programs of the Institute for Molecular Neuroscience (IMN) will be designed to accelerate development of new, medication-based treatments to mitigate the impact of AUDs and SUDs.
 
An FY2010 appropriation via the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) of the US Army/Department of Defense (DoD) will initiate funding of these new programs. TATRC performs medical reconnaissance and special operations to address critical gaps in underrepresented DoD medical research programs. TATRC is an office of the headquarters of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC). TATRC fosters research in areas such as neuroscience, genetics/genomics, health informatics, telemedicine, and computational biology, and promotes and manages science and engineering in other key portfolios.
 
The IMN Programs will be comprised of collaborative, multidisciplinary teams of leading scientists and individual investigators from a group of world-class research institutions.  The objective of the IMN is to ultimately bring together multidisciplinary teams and investigators, including basic, translational, and clinical scientists, into cooperative and synergistic working groups.  The goals of these program teams will be to identify and develop new medications and protocols for treatment of AUDs/SUDS in the military/veteran context.  A two-step approach will be implemented.  The first year will focus on establishing a Proof-of-Principle (PoP) for relevant hypotheses, through clinical or animal studies, for example.  For the second year of their funding, those PoP projects with the most promise will be identified and expanded through Extend-and-Confirm (EC) Awards (dependent upon availability and confirmation of funding).  Collaboration between and among funded groups will be encouraged.  This approach will take advantage of the best scientific and developmental talent from within our strongest research institutions to accelerate the discovery and development necessary to meet this critical challenge.