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Understanding addiction through zebrafish: unveiling new solutions

Project Overview

Addiction is a massive issue that spans generations and cultures. Understanding and learning to help those suffering from addiction should continue to be a high- priority topic. Whether it’s looking to the past for answers, like the use of psychedelics for treatment, further understanding modern pharmaceutical interventions, or for future drugs. It seems important to investigate how we can efficiently test these drugs before testing on humans. From this idea, the humble zebrafish can fill this role. Zebrafish have great potential for studying addiction, and a better understanding of basic drug and addiction interactions before human subjects need to get involved. It is crucial when thinking about using an animal in addiction research that the goal is to model addiction-like behaviour. To model realistic behaviour, we use a model that focuses on the anxiety caused by addiction and withdrawal and the seeking behaviour that people and animals go through while addicted. We concentrate on building a repeatable set of behavioural tests using zebrafish with a consistent dosing protocol to establish addiction. We use an ethanol addiction model to simulate the addiction behaviours we are looking for. To better understand addiction on a brain level the whole-brain neurotransmitter levels will be analyzed with a focus on neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. Using our tested and proven dosing schedule we plan to in combination with behavioural tests to see how classic and novel drugs interact in combating addiction-like behaviours in our zebrafish model. Continued research into this model could show the usefulness of zebrafish in rapidly testing pharmacological interventions in the early stages of development and build a better base-level understanding of the interplay of addictive substances, behaviours, and addiction treatment drugs. Our goal is to create an efficient steppingstone to be used to support advancements in addiction treatment prior to human research.

Principal Investigator

Ethan Hagen , University of Alberta

Project Ongoing

Understanding addiction through zebrafish: unveiling new solutions

  • Grant Type

    Capacity building grants

  • Area of research

    Mental Health

  • Disease Area

    Mental illness

  • Competition

    Doctoral Personnel Awards for Indigenous Scholars

  • Province

    Alberta

  • Start Date

    2024

  • Total Grant Amount

    $68,750