2019, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation

Daniel X. Freedman Award

DP1 Avenir Award in Genetics and Epigenetics

2018, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation

NARSAD Young Investigator Award

2017, College on Problems of Drug Use and Dependence

Young Investigator Award

The Nancy Rutledge Zhaniser Award

Frontiers in Psychiatry (Addictive Disorders) : Associate Editor

American College of Neuropsychopharmacology : ACNP Associate Membership

Neuropsychopharmacology : Editorial Board

The role of the neuropeptide PEN receptor, GPR83, in the reward pathway: Relationship to sex-differences

Cues play a critical role in estrous cycle-dependent enhancement of cocaine reinforcement

Sex Differences in Value-Based Decision Making Underlie Substance Use Disorders in Females

Synaptic Microtubule-Associated Protein EB3 and SRC Phosphorylation Mediate Structural and Behavioral Adaptations During Withdrawal From Cocaine Self-Administration

Shared Behavioral and Neurocircuitry Disruptions in Drug Addiction, Obesity, and Binge Eating Disorder: Focus on Group I mGluRs in the Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway

Vanderbilt is a dynamic center of research, learning and growth - a private research university of 6,300 undergrads and 5,300 grad/professional students.

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Calipari received her PhD in Neuroscience in 2013 in the laboratory of Sara Jones at Wake Forest University School of Medicine where she studied how self-administered drugs altered dopaminergic function to drive addictive behaviors. She then went on to complete her postdoctoral training with Eric Nestler at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she used circuit probing techniques to understand the temporally specific neural signals that underlie motivation and reward learning. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Pharmacology. Her independent work seeks to characterize and modulate the precise circuits in the brain that underlie both adaptive and maladaptive processes in reward, motivation, and associative learning.

Opioids

adaptive processes

self-administered drugs

Dopamine

Addiction and Recovery

Brain Behavior

Medicine and Drugs

Addiction

Neuroscience

Brain

Addictive Behavior

associative learning

Pharmacology

neural signals

maladaptive processes

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Meet the Calipari who holds court at Vanderbilt lab

Activity-dependent changes in the dopamine transporter underlie addiction vulnerability in females.

Dopaminergic mechanisms underlying sex differences in valence-based decision making

Developing novel preclinical models to study addiction in females

Sex differences in behavioral strategies: the role of the neural encoding of stimulus value

The neural basis of sex differences in value-based decision making

addiction-expert-on-fda-plan-to-lower-nicotine-levels

Associate Professor of Pharmacology

Erin Calipari, assistant professor of pharmacology, is available for media commentary on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s plans for a proposed rule to require companies to lower the nicotine levels in cigarettes.

Erin is lead researcher at the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, and her research focuses on the neuroscience behind addiction. She can speak to how the brain gets addicted to substances and the many ways in which addiction takes a toll on the human body, as well as nicotine dosing. 

Much of Erin's research also focuses on gender differences in addiction and the need to understand female-specific factors that contribute to Substance Use Disorder.

  

Addiction expert on FDA plan to lower nicotine levels

Erin Calipari, Vanderbilt University Assistant Professor of Pharmacology provides an overview of her research which seeks to characterize and modulate the precise circuits in the brain that underlie both adaptive and maladaptive processes in reward, motivation, and associative learning, to develop improved treatments for complex and devastating psychiatric disorders. 


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Erin Calipari Research Overview – Addiction

The same immune system that fights infection and the flu could join the battle against opioid addiction, new research out of the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research indicates. Erin Calipari, assistant professor of pharmacology and corresponding author on a paper in The Journal of Neuroscience, says there’s promise in specific immune system peptides – amino acid compounds that signal cells how to function. In this case, they may be affecting brain activity and, by extension, drug cravings.

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Immune System Shows Promise in Fight Against Opioid Cravings

Women’s hormonal cycles may not only make them more prone to drug addiction but also more affected by triggers that lead to relapse, a new Vanderbilt University study revealed. The findings are especially significant since there are virtually no addiction studies in women that account for these cycles.

Erin Calipari, an assistant professor of pharmacology in the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, points out that women represent a particularly vulnerable population, with higher rates of addiction following exposure to drugs, but addiction studies have primarily focused on the mechanisms underlying these effects in men. Her study found that, when fertility-related hormone levels are high, females learn faster, make stronger associations to cues in their environment and are more prone to seek rewards.

“Women becoming addicted to drugs may be a fundamentally different process than men,” Calipari said. “It’s important to understand this, because it’s the first step in developing treatments that are actually effective.”

The next step, she said, would be to figure out specifics of how hormonal shifts affect women’s brains and, ultimately, develop medications that could help override those. But long before those future medications are available, treatment centers could use the information in this study to educate women about their stronger mental connections to places and objects. That may mean a higher chance of relapse just by, for example, visiting a place where they used drugs or holding the kind of spoon they used in the process.

Researchers historically have avoided using female animals in medical studies specifically so they don’t have to account for influences from hormonal cycles. As a result, medication development has often focused on correcting dysfunctions in men, an effect that may explain why women often don’t respond to available medications or treatments in the same way as men do, Calipari said.

Her work was published today in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in a paper titled “Cues play a critical role in estrous cycle-dependent enhancement of cocaine reinforcement.”

In this study, male and female rats were allowed to dose themselves with cocaine by pushing a lever, with a light set up to come on during dosing. That’s similar to the environmental cues, such as drug paraphernalia, present when humans are taking drugs. When their circulating hormone levels were high, female rats made stronger associations with the light and were more likely to keep pushing the lever as much as it took to get any amount of cocaine.

Ultimately, females were willing to pay more in the presence of these “cues” to get cocaine. The results are transferable to humans through behavioral economic analysis which uses a complicated mathematical equation with values for the most and least a subject will do to get a payoff. It’s one of the few ways that comparisons can be made across species. 

“We found that the animals will press a lever just to get the light – that environmental stimuli,” Calipari said. “That has value to them.
“There’s epidemiological data that says women are more vulnerable, but it’s unclear what the factors are. We know they transition to addiction faster and have more problems with craving and relapse. Now, with research like this, we’re beginning to isolate environmental and physiological causes.”

This new research builds on earlier work Calipari published at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai that showed estrogen intensifies the brain’s dopamine reward for cocaine use.

The Vanderbilt research was funded by NIH grants DA042111, MH065215-15 and MH064913-15, the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation, the Whitehall Foundation and the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation.


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Women’s hormones play role in drug addiction, higher relapse rates

Erin Calipari assistant professor of pharmacology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences discusses what effects the Covid-19 pandemic is having on those struggling with opioid addiction.


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Ask an Expert:  What effect has the pandemic had on the opioid crisis?

A Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research conversation for National Women Touched by Addiction Day created by Mending Hearts, featuring:

Piper Kerman: author of the memoir “Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison”

Rep. Tarra Simmons, J.D.: Democratic member of the Washington State House of Representatives, and executive director of the Civil Survival Project

Katrina Frierson: President and CEO of Mending Hearts

This conversation focuses on the intersection of incarceration, reentry, and addiction and their impact on women. On National Women Touched by Addiction Day, we lift up women who have faced addiction firsthand or have felt its effects through others, and call for the destigmatization of addiction.

For more information about the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, please visit: https://www.vcarscience.com/











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The Intersection of Incarceration and Addiction: A Conversation for Women Touched by Addiction Day

Four-time Grammy Award-winning musician Jason Isbell talks about the impact of COVID-19 on addiction and sobriety and the intersection of sobriety, addiction and music in the Lab-to-Table Conversation—a monthly series organized by the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Basic Sciences. Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research Danny Winder and Assistant Professor of Pharmacology Erin Calipari talked with Isbell.  

Isbell has personal experience with addiction and sobriety, which has influenced his music and work over the past decade. This influence can be heard on his 2013 album Southeastern—his first after getting sober—as well as more recent songs like “It Gets Easier” and his work with actor Bradley Cooper on the movie A Star Is Born.

If you, or someone you know is struggling with alcohol or substance abuse, we encourage you to reach out to resources for help.  One excellent starting place on campus is Vanderbilt Recovery Support (https://www.vanderbilt.edu/recoverysupport), whose website also provides lines to a variety of web resources to help treatment seeking individuals.







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Jason Isbell: Songs and Sobriety

Media Inquiry