Addictive Substance Project
Addictive Substance Project
Kazutaka Ikeda, the head of Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences since 2015, has been the leader of the Addictive Substance Project since 2005. He graduated Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 1989. After that, he studied under Dr. Kenji Sobue, Dr. Masayoshi Mishina and Dr. Toshiro Kumanishi as a graduate student. He received Doctor of Medical Science in 1995 from Graduate School of Medical Science, Niigata University. He started to work at RIKEN as a researcher under the supervision of Dr. Masao Ito, Dr Ryoji Yano and Dr Hiroaki Niki in 1995. He moved to Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Psychiatry in 2000 and has leaded a project team since 2002. His current interest is to improve treatment, prevention, and understanding of addiction, pain, and developmental disorders through revealing of mechanisms underlying addictive substance effects.
Backgrounds
Addiction to various substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol, and tobacco) and behaviors (e.g., internet and gambling) is a serious public health problem. Preventing and solving problems that are related to addiction are important. Some addictive drugs are also widely used as analgesics and for the treatment of developmental disorders. Some molecules that are involved in the actions of addictive drugs may be shared between analgesia and developmental disorders.
The goals of our project are the following:
(1) Developing novel treatments for addiction and prevention by studying action mechanisms of opioids, dopamine, and hallucinogens. (2) Improving personalized pain treatment based on the genome information. (3) Developing novel treatments for developmental disorders including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder.
Objectives
- To develop methods of treatment and prevention for addiction and similar disorders based on the active mechanisms in addictive drugs
- To improve, adapt, and expand appropriate pain treatment tailored to the genes of particular individuals from early stages of treatment
- To develop new treatments for developmental disorders, such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorders
Members
Project Leader Kazutaka Ikeda
- Soichiro Ide
- Masayo Fujita
- Seii Ohka
- Hiroko Kotajima