History

The Center for Addiction Research (CAR) was established in January 2004 as an institutional center of excellent and coordinating force to promote, stimulate, and support discovery and translational research in the etiology and pathophysiology of addictive processes. CAR has employed cutting-edge technologies in molecular biology, chemistry, behavioral neuroscience, pharmacology, genetics, proteomics, and drug design to discover novel approaches to diagnose, cure, or alleviate addiction and its medical complications. 

To capitalize on CAR’s successes and continue to address important priorities in public health, CAR’s name was changed to the Center for Addiction Sciences and Therapeutics (CAST) in spring 2023. Our rebranding amplifies the Center’s impact by emphasizing that addiction is a disease, breakthrough scientific approaches are conquering neuropsychiatric disorders, and our discoveries are yielding answers for novel therapeutics, providing hope for saving lives and productivity.

Addiction is a disease.

This change aligns appropriately with our current portfolio of faculty and mentee excellence in research, grants, and training opportunities, as well as our community engagement and outreach, overall interprofessional strengths, and immense opportunities that now exist in therapeutic advances. This includes new collaborations across UTMB, the nation, and the world that have emerged as key opportunities for CAST investigators. CAST core facilities encompass XXX square feet of space on the 3rd floor of the Neuroscience building (Bldg. 17) and include research, meeting, teaching, laboratory, and office space. CAST faculty investigators have generated more than $XX million in external research funding since 2004.