Science Advisory Board

Charles O’Brien, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Charles O‘Brien has been a distinguished member of the University of Pennsylvania’s faculty since 1971 and currently serves as a Professor and founding Director of the Center for Studies of Addiction. He also founded the Drug Dependence Treatment Service at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center where he served as Chief of Psychiatry responsible for over 9,000 psychiatric patients until 2008. He is board certified in both neurology and psychiatry with added qualifications in addiction psychiatry. Dr. O‘Brien’s research group has been responsible for numerous discoveries described in over 500 publications that have elucidated information on the nature of addiction and improved the results of treatment for addictive disorders. His work involves discovery of central nervous system changes involved in relapse, new medications, behavioral treatments and instruments for measuring the severity of addictive disorders. Dr. O’Brien was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and has won numerous research and teaching awards throughout his career. He is a former president of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Kathleen Brady, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Kathleen T. Brady is a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in addiction psychiatry. As a Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Brady is Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Division, Director of the Women‘s Research Center, Associate Director of the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), Director of the Southern Consortium of NIDA’s Clinical Trials Network, Director of MUSC’s application for the Clinical and Translational Science Award and Associate Dean for Clinical Research. Her research interests are in the areas of drug and alcohol abuse/addiction and comorbid conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders. She has served as Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator, and Mentor on numerous research projects. Dr. Brady has been very active in organizations addressing the concerns of psychiatry and addictions. She is Past President of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse and Past President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. She has served on the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Committee on Community Based Treatment of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, as well as the Board of Directors of the College of Problems of Drug Dependence.

Jed E. Rose, Ph.D.

Jed E. Rose, Ph.D. is Director of the Duke Center for Smoking Cessation Research and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center. Additionally, he is President and CEO of Rose Research Center, based in Raleigh, NC. Dr. Rose is considered one of the leading authorities on the treatment of tobacco addiction. In the early 1980’s, Dr. Rose led the initial studies of transdermal nicotine administration, which helped pave the way for the development of commercial nicotine skin patches as a smoking cessation treatment; he also conducted pioneering studies into the role of sensorimotor aspects of cigarette smoking and methods to substitute for them, including novel e-cigarette like technologies. Since then, Dr. Rose and his colleagues have continued to develop smoking cessation treatments, including novel pharmacologic approaches and extinction-based treatments to enable smokers to quit smoking more successfully. Their studies of agonist-antagonist treatment provided support for the development of varenicline as a partial agonist for smoking cessation treatment. In addition to developing more effective smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction strategies, Dr. Rose’s research program strives toward a deeper understanding of tobacco dependence. His research is currently applying brain-imaging methodologies, including positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to identify brain substrates underlying craving and addiction. Genomic and other individual predictors of quit smoking success are also being elucidated. The knowledge gained from this basic research program will be applied to the design of novel therapeutic approaches, and to the development of algorithms for personalizing treatment so that each smoker receives the treatment most likely to yield a successful outcome.

Nicholas E. Goeders, Ph.D.

Dr. Goeders is the scientific founder of the Company, which was based on his preclinical research. U.S. patent number 9,415,107, the technology underlying the Company, was issued in his name in 2016. He is currently Head of the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology & Neuroscience at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. Prior to that time, Dr. Goeders was a Staff Fellow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the Addiction Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland and a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Neuroscience. In 1984, he received his Doctor of Philosophy from the Louisiana State University Medical Center with a major in Pharmacology. His research has been actively funded by NIH since 1983. He has published over 105 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and has presented the results of his research worldwide. He is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a former member of the Board of Directors and a current Fellow of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, the Neuropharmacology Division of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Behavioral Pharmacology Society and the Society for Neuroscience.

Rajita Sinha, Ph.D.

Rajita Sinha, PhD is a Clinical Neuroscientist and the Foundations Fund Endowed Professor in Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is also the Chief of the Psychology Section in Psychiatry and Co-Director of Education for the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (home of Yale’s CTSA) and she is founding Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Stress Center. Her own research has made discoveries on stress mechanisms that link to addiction and poor health outcomes, and on developing and validating novel stress reduction strategies that target these mechanisms. She has also elucidated sex differences in stress biology that affects addiction risk, relapse and recovery. Her research has been supported by a series of NIH funded research projects for over 20 years and she has published over 250 scientific peer reviewed publications in these areas. She currently serves on the NIAAA Advisory Council and also on the Expert Scientific Panel for the NIH Common Fund supported Science of Behavior Change program. She has served on many other NIH special emphasis panels, review committees and workshops, presented at numerous national and international conferences, with a focus in the areas of stress, neuroscience of addiction and treatment development.

Theresa Winhusen, Ph.D.

Dr. Winhusen has conducted NIDA-funded research for the past 18 years devoted to improving the treatment of substance use disorders with a particular emphasis on cocaine and tobacco use disorders. As a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Winhusen is the Director of the Addiction Sciences Division as well as the Director of the Ohio Valley Node of NIDA’s Clinical Trials Network. She is one of the foremost experts in conducting multi-site addiction clinical trials, having been the national PI for five NIH-funded multi-site clinical trials. Dr. Winhusen’s research has contributed to our understanding of co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders and to the neurocognitive functioning of individuals with stimulant use disorders.

Thomas R. Kosten, M.D.

Dr. Kosten is the JH Waggoner Chair and Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, vice-Chair for Psychiatry and Co-director of the Dan L. Duncan Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) at Baylor College of Medicine. He is the founding Vice Chair for Addiction Psychiatry of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and Past President of both the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP) and the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD). He is a Distinguished Life Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). He has served as a Congressional Fellow in the US House of Representatives and has been a long-standing member of various substance abuse commissions for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as well as various advisory boards for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Defense (DOD). He is the current Editor for the American Journal on Addictions, past Editor for the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, and serves on the board of several notable journals in substance abuse. He has published over 700 papers, books, and reviews describing his contributions , particularly in the use of pharmacotherapeutics for treating cocaine and opioid addictive disorders as well as his work in vaccine development for cocaine and methamphetamine addictions.