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RESOURCES
All of the training
faculty have research space located within close proximity to each other at the
University of Kentucky. All are involved in interdisciplinary research and
belong to one of the Medical Center departments that include the Departments of
Anatomy and Neurobiology, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, Neurology, Pharmaceutical Sciences
or the
Department of Psychology within the College of Arts and Sciences. All laboratories are fully equipped to conduct
state-of-the-art basic biomedical research.
Each participating
department houses shared facilities available to all faculty in that unit and
among other units. A wonderful tradition of sharing exists at the University,
thus these facilities are available to all faculty and students regardless of
department or unit. These departments contain general research equipment and
facilities including tissue culture facilities, cold and warm rooms, autoclaves,
dishwashers, photographic dark rooms and film processors, liquid scintillation
and gamma counters, ultracentrifuges, super speed centrifuges, densitometers,
spectrophotometers, conventional and ultralow freezers, ice machines, etc. In
addition more specialized equipment such as mass spectrometers, phosphoimagers,
refractometers, HPLCs, fluorometers, FPLC systems, cell harvesters, computerized
image analysis systems, stereological cell counting systems, 3D reconstruction
systems, inverted and upright confocal microscopes (including UV and multiphoton
systems), electron microscopes, and microscopes interfaced with morphometry/unbiased
cell counting systems are all available. Sharing of equipment is encouraged by
the University through the funding of maintenance contracts for major equipment
that is shared among multiple units. The University provides over $1.5 million
dollars annually for these service contracts.
In addition to the
individual research laboratories and units, the resources and environment of the
University are excellent and will truly enhance the proposed training program.
Drug abuse related research is conducted across several departments and colleges
and through various Centers at the University of Kentucky. In addition to
research being conducted at the molecular and cellular levels, which is the
focus of this training program, research is being conducted on the behavioral
aspects of drug abuse within the Psychology and Behavioral Science departments
as well as at the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research and the Center for Drug
Abuse Research Translation. The Center on Drug and Alcohol Research focuses on
the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse through education and training
activities and the providing of quality care for drug and alcohol users/abusers,
as well as fostering behavioral research using animal models of drug abuse. Of
note, the Center on Drug and Alcohol Abuse makes available each year funds to
support 4-6 small research pilot projects ($2,000) that students and
postdoctoral fellows working in the drug abuse field can apply for to help
support their research efforts. The Center for Drug Abuse Research Translation
focuses on the etiology and prevention of drug abuse conducting research using
both animal models and humans. Dr. Mike Bardo serves as Director of the Scientific
Core and as PI on one of the Projects in this Center grant, while Dr. Linda Dwoskin
serves as Co-PI on Dr. Bardo’s Project as well as on the Executive Committee as
part of the Core. Both of these individuals are among the training faculty of
this proposal. The presence of these Centers and their faculty provides a
strong complimentary resource for this training program.
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