Approximately $11.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been awarded to a research team led by Chang-Guo Zhan and Fang Zheng at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. The funding will further ongoing substance use disorder treatment research in collaboration with Sharon Walsh at the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research (CDAR) and Mei-Chuan Ko at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Zhan is the Director of the College of Pharmacy’s Molecular Modeling and Biopharmaceutical Center (MMBC) as well as the Chemoinformatics and Drug Design Core of the Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation (CPRI), which focuses on translational research and education.

The newly funded project will utilize a master cell bank of a long-acting protein drug candidate developed in partnership with the drug manufacturing technology company Catalent. This additional funding will also allow for further preclinical and clinical development, including a first-in-human clinical trial.

Through the clinical trial, Zhan and his team hope to demonstrate the safety and pharmacokinetic profile of the long-acting protein in humans. The implications are enormous. Should Zhan and his team eventually demonstrate the safety and efficacy in humans, this means the successful development of a first-in-class medication for the treatment of cocaine use disorder.

Funding provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01DA051079. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.