UAMS Gives Students Close-Up of Opioids Treatment, Research
| May 31, 2018 | As 19 Arkansas undergraduate students listened quietly, the 20-year-old opioid addict, sitting a few feet away, talked with a UAMS psychiatrist and then a UAMS psychologist about her failed attempts to quit using.
“Lynn,” top right, a simulated patient, speaks with UAMS psychiatrist Michael Mancino, M.D., about her opioid addiction.
The messy addiction story of “Lynn,” with treatment medications she dislikes and friends who enjoy using drugs, highlighted the challenges facing opioid researchers trying to find more effective medicinal and behavioral solutions.
Kennede McLeroy-Charles, a University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) student, was among the students attending the first-of-its-kind workshop for Arkansas undergraduates sponsored by the UAMS-run Arkansas INBRE (IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence).
She was struck by the exchanges between Lynn, a simulated patient, and her doctors. She was especially intrigued by the longer session with psychologist Michael Cucciare, Ph.D.
“I didn’t know about the psychologist approach on how to treat it because I’ve been focused on the medicine-based approaches to addiction,” said McLeroy-Charles, who conducted methamphetamine research as a student intern at UAMS last summer and will do so again this summer. “That was really interesting to me, how to counsel them or how to get them out of tricky situations or avoid situations that would make you relapse. I didn’t know the different ways to do that.”
The Arkansas INBRE program supports research in public and private four-year colleges across Arkansas with the aim of building research capacity and raising awareness about career opportunities in biomedical research. It is supported by the National Institutes of Health Institutional Development Award (IDeA). Lawrence Cornett, Ph.D., UAMS vice chancellor for research, is the principal investigator and director of Arkansas INBRE.
UAMS researcher Teresa Hudson, Pharm.D., Ph.D., provided an overview of the opioid epidemic.
“There is a need for new approaches in order to reduce opioid addiction in this country,” Cornett said. “Here at UAMS we have a lot of strength in addiction research. We thought it would be important to have students to come to UAMS and show them the career possibilities.”
Also popular at the Bench to Bedside Opioid Addiction Research Workshop were a series of roundtable meetings with researchers and their graduate students. It was a rare chance for the undergraduate students to have one-on-one discussion with some of UAMS’ top addiction scientists, including Cucciare, William Fantegrossi, Ph.D., Teresa Hudson, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Michael Owens, Ph.D., Paul Prather, Ph.D., and Ronald Thompson, Ph.D.
Jesus Mendez, an incoming senior at Arkansas Tech, said he was immediately interested in the workshop when he heard about it.
“There’s a huge opioid crisis in the United States right now, and I wanted to learn more about it,” he said.
Mendez, who hopes to attend medical school at UAMS, was also excited to take part in the small roundtable meetings.
“I think it’s been incredibly interesting,” Mendez said. “I really like the opioid patient simulation they did, and the roundtable meetings were super interesting – getting to know everybody and the researchers and what they’re doing and how they’re going about this opioid crisis.”
UAMS researcher William Fantegrossi, Ph.D., center, meets with workshop attendees.
Sadagicous Owens, an incoming sophomore at UAPB, said the patient simulation sparked her passion for helping people.
“For me to be looking at an actual psychiatrist and psychologist with a patient is incredible,” Owens said. “At the roundtables, I was very happy being able to ask the actual researchers what is the phenotype and what is the genotype of the animals you’re using. They were very open so that we can understand from their point of view.”
McLeroy-Charles said she was also struck by something she learned in the opioid epidemic overview given by Hudson, associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. Hudson noted that while the number of opioids prescriptions dispensed in the United States has declined, the number of opioid overdoses is increasing.
“That was really interesting,” McLeroy-Charles said. “I didn’t know that.”