About the Michael C. Gibson Addiction Research Program

The Michael C. Gibson Addiction Research Program was established in 2020 by a generous gift from Dr. and Mrs. William Gibson in honor of their son. These funds along with awards from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense support the research conducted in the Addiction Laboratory under the leadership of Dr. Therese Kosten co-lead by Dr. Colin Haile.

Research in the Gibson Addiction Laboratory investigates precipitants and consequences of Alcohol (AUDs) and Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) by employing sophisticated behavioral models in rodents with the aim of developing more effective treatment strategies and elucidating underlying mechanisms. Much of our research uses standard pharmacological manipulations but we also explore new avenues such as developing and testing anti-drug vaccines as well as examining alterations in the gut microbiota due to drug exposure. Some research is aimed at assessing epigenetic effects in response to developmental manipulations. Other research investigates the role of stress and explores potential sex differences in responses to psychoactive drugs and addresses related topics including emotion and learning that are relevant to affective and post-traumatic stress disorders.

 

Representative Publications

Anti-drug vaccines

Stone AE, Scheuermann SE, Haile CN, Cuny GD, Velasquez ML, Linhuber JP, Duddupudi A, Vigliaturo J, Pravetoni M, Kosten TA, Kosten TR, Norton EB. Novel fentanyl conjugate vaccine by injected or mucosal delivery with dmLT or LTA1 adjuvants implicates IgA in protection from drug challenge. NPJ Vaccines, 6:69, 2021.

Haile CN, Baker MD, Sanchez SA Quadri S, Duppupudi AL, Cuny GD, Kosten TR, Kosten TA. An immunconjugate vaccine alters distribution and reduces the antinociceptive, behavioral and physiological effects of fentanyl in male and female rats. Pharmaceutics, 14(11):2290, 2022.

Gut microbiota

Forouzan S, Hoffman KL, Kosten TA. (2021) Methamphetamine exposure and its cessation alter gut microbiota and induce depressive-like behavioral effects on rats. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 238(1):281-292.

McGrew K, Monts de Oca N, Kosten TA. Effect of relocation, social housing changes and diarrhea status on the microbiome composition of juvenile cynomolgus macaques (Macaca Fascicularis). Microorganisms, 1, 13, 2025.

Pharmacological manipulations

Nieto SJ, Quave CB, Kosten TA. (2018) Naltrexone alters alcohol self-administration behaviors and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity in a sex-dependent manner in rats. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 167:50-59.

Haile CN, Kosten TA. (2017) The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha agonist fenofibrate attenuates alcohol self-administration in rats. Neuropharmacology. 116:364-370.

Developmental and Epigenetic Research

Nieto SJ, Kosten TA. (2019) Who's your daddy? Behavioral and epigenetic consequences of paternal drug exposure. Int J Dev Neurosci. 78:109-121.

Walters H, Kosten TA. (2019) Early life stress and the propensity to develop addictive behaviors, Int J Dev Neurosci. 78:156-169.

Nieto SJ, Patriquin MA, Nielsen DA, Kosten TA. (2016) Donʼt worry; be informed about the epigenetics of anxiety. Pharmacol Biochem Behav, 146-147:60-72.

Kosten TA, Huang W, Nielsen DA. (2014) Sex and litter effects on anxiety and DNA methylation levels of stress and neurotrophin genes in adolescent rats. Dev Psychobiol. Apr;56(3):392-406.

Stress, Emotion, Sex Differences

Quave, CB, Nieto SJ, Haile CN. & Kosten TA. (2021) Immune receptor toll-like receptor 4 contributes to stress-induced affective responses in a sex-specific manner. Brain Behav, Immunity - Health, 14.

Nieto SJ, Quave CB, Kosten TA.  Naltrexone alters alcohol self-administration behaviors and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity in a sex-dependent manner in rats.  Pharmacology, Biochemistry & Behavior, 167:50-59, 2018.

Little KM, Kosten TA. Focus on fentanyl in females: Sex and gender differences in the physiological and behavioral effects of fentanyl.  Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, Oct;71:101096, 2023.

List of publications in in Google Scholar.

About Therese A. Kosten, Ph.D., Director of the Gibson Addiction Research Laboratory

Dr. Kosten received her BA in Psychology from Purchase College in New York in 1978 and her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1986 where she investigated neural mechanisms of taste and feeding behavior. She began conducting research in addictions under the mentorship of Eric J. Nestler, M.D., Ph.D. and Bruce J. Rounsaville, M.D. in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine in 1987 where she was on the faculty until 2006. She then became an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and later Professor at Baylor College of Medicine. In 2014, she joined the faculty at University of Houston as a Professor of Psychology.

Dr. Kosten is the Head of the UH Developmental, Cognitive, and Behavioral Neuroscience graduate program in Psychology, the Scientific Director of the UH Animal Behavior Core, a member of the advisory board for the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics, and a member of the steering committee for the UH Drug Discovery Institute.  She is also a member of the Biology of Behavior Institute and the Texas Research on Addiction Consortium at UH.

She is active in several scientific organizations including College on Problems on Drug Dependence, Society for Neurosciences, Research Society on Alcoholism, International Society for Developmental Neurosciences, and Behavior, Biology, and Chemistry: Translational Research in Addiction.

 

Courses taught by Dr. Kosten at UH

Biological Psychology (Undergraduate) 

Psychopharmacology (Graduate)

Principles and Theories of Learning and Motivation (Graduate)

Dr. Kosten is no longer accepting graduate students

 

Laboratory Members

 

Current members

Colin N. Haile, M.D., Ph.D., Research Associate Professor. Co-director of the Michael C. Gibson Addiction Research Program and Director of Operations, UH Animal Behavior Core

Richard A. Meisch, M.D. Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at UH

Kaitlyn Little, Graduate student

Brooke Franklin, Graduate student

Carlos Lopez-Arteaga, Research Assistant

Mark Harding, Research Assistant

 

Collaborators

Greg Cuny, Ph.D., Professor, Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UH

Thomas Kosten, M.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine

 

Former members

Shadab Forouzan, Ph.D., Senior User Experience Researcher @ LexisNexis | User-Centric Research, Data Analysis

Keely McGrew, Ph.D., Manager, NHP Behavior Management at Charles River Laboratories

Steven Nieto, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Wayne State University

Odochi Nwoko, Ph.D., Regulatory Scientist III, Carmargo Pharmaceutical Services