Santiago Cuesta
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Neuroscience·Early-career
Addiction affects more than 27 million people in the United States, and no successful treatments exist for this chronic, relapsing disease. The bacteria living in the gut, called the gut microbiota, have been linked to behavior and to brain disorders, including substance use disorders.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
- Topics
addiction
substance use disorders
psychostimulants
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Identify how psychostimulant exposure changes gut microbial composition and the gut's chemical environment, using metagenomics to profile microbial DNA and metabolomics to measure small molecules.
- Confirm candidate host signals and describe how bacteria sense them, by changing gut physiology with drugs and altering the genes of human gut bacterial strains.
- Test how manipulating the gut microbiota changes addiction-like behavior in mice, combining microbial manipulations with established animal models of addiction under microbiologically controlled conditions.
More about the research
Most evidence, however, comes from correlations between patients or animals and the microbes found in their feces. How gut bacteria actually signal to the brain is still unknown. This project aims to find the communication routes and molecules that connect gut microbes, stimulant drugs and the risk of developing addiction.
Why it matters
Substance use disorders cost the United States an estimated $740 billion each year, and people with addiction lack effective treatments. By defining exactly how gut bacteria and stimulant drugs interact to shape addiction risk, this work could point to new whole-body interventions, such as ones that target the gut, for treating addiction.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jenessa Winston
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Test whether daily supplementation with the secondary bile acid ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) changes susceptibility to and severity of Clostridioides difficile infection in IL10-knockout colitis mice.
Melinda Engevik
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify the bacterial compounds produced directly from the breakdown of mucin glycoproteins by gut bacteria, using metabolomics.
Mark Alkema
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Neuroscience
Identify the neuronal targets and molecular pathways through which nitric oxide made by gut bacteria suppresses seizures in C. elegans unc-2/CaV2α gain-of-function mutants, a worm model of a migraine-linked calcium channel disorder.
The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.