Congratulations to Yuyang Dong on her successful thesis defense and earning the title of Dr. Yuyang Dong! Her dissertation, Identifying Novel Therapeutic Approaches for Individual Symptoms of Alcohol Use Disorder, advances our understanding of the distinct biological mechanisms underlying pain, craving, and alcohol dependence. This important work highlights promising new therapeutic targets that could improve treatment options for individuals affected by Alcohol Use Disorder. Next, she will remain in the Gregus/Buczynski Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, where she will continue advancing this impactful line of research. See abstract below: 

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a multi-symptomatic disorder which presents a continued challenge and burden to healthcare worldwide. While current food and drug administration (FDA) approved treatments of AUD address some symptoms, they do not address others, notably alcohol dependence-associated pain; additionally, the existing treatments have limited effectiveness, leaving subpopulations of AUD patients under-served. Our work examined and summarized the current research on alcohol dependence-associated pain and provided a comprehensive overview of techniques to quantify nociception in rodent models, in the context of AUD research. We then examined different potential nociceptive signaling pathways for their involvement in dependence associated-pain using the chronic intermittent ethanol vapor (CIE) mouse model. We found that the alcohol dependence associated-pain mechanism is distinct from other mechanisms of chronic pain and that it is independent of endocannabinoid signaling pathways. As our prior work found association between plasma levels of pro-inflammatory lipid 15-Hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (15(S)-HETE) in AUD patients with their alcohol craving, and the 15-lipoxygenase (15-LOX) signaling pathway is involved in the development of chronic pain, we examined the relationship between this pathway and various symptoms of AUD. We found that 15-LOX signaling contributes to the escalation of alcohol intake characteristic of alcohol dependence and the development of craving-like behaviors. Overall, our findings highlight the importance and uniqueness of the different mechanisms that underlie different symptoms of AUD, with alcohol dependence associated-pain having a distinct mechanism different from other chronic pain mechanisms and powerfully implicate the 15-LOX signaling pathway in escalation of alcohol intake and craving.