Wayne State University scientist leads the charge against opioid addiction

No matter how difficult the battle is, nor the weight of the stigma it may carry, every disease needs a champion. For the countless men and women fighting the opioid addiction epidemic that roared to life a few years ago in Michigan and beyond, a scientist at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit named Mark Greenwald, Ph.D., is in their corner, and has been for more than two decades.

Dr. Greenwald is a professor and associate chair of research in the medical school’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, and directs its prolific Substance Abuse Research Division. He also serves on the Wayne State University Task Force for Prescription Drug and Opioid Abuse, which three years ago proposed curriculum changes that would better prepare health professions students to work with those who have substance use disorders, including more treatment education and tools to address increased challenges in prescribing controlled substances.

Opioids such as fentanyl, hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine, codeine and heroin relieve pain by activating opioid receptors in the brain, and have high abuse potential. Opioid misuse was blamed for 49,000 deaths nationwide in 2017, up from 8,048 in 1999. This prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lower the country’s average life expectancy.

When the National Institutes of Health sought impactful research on this topic, they funded a grant project by Dr. Greenwald to fight the crisis here in Michigan. NIH’s “Helping to End Addiction Longterm” strategy, or HEAL Initiative, is designed to apply scientific solutions to reverse the national opioid crisis. Under his leadership, research teams at Wayne State and the Henry Ford Health System are using a $4 million HEAL award to explore a novel therapeutic approach for reducing relapse by testing an alternative to sleep medicines doctors normally prescribe to treat insomnia. Disturbed sleep can be a major predictor of a drug relapse.

The HEAL study isn’t the only weapon in Dr. Greenwald’s arsenal against addiction. He is also a core faculty member of Michigan CARES, a collaborative educational effort between Wayne State, Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Spectrum Health to train more addiction medicine specialists, because fewer than 200 physicians in Michigan are presently certified in addiction medicine or addiction psychiatry. Michigan CARES will assist physicians in fulfilling the requirements through online courses, clinical experiences and leadership opportunities.

Dr. Greenwald is also mentoring several Wayne State medical students and doctoral students in the Translational Neuroscience Program. They include Tabitha Moses, who is pursuing both a medical degree and a doctorate. Dr. Greenwald was awarded the university’s Jack Ryan Award endowed by the Dr. Morris S. Brent Fund in April to support her research project exploring transcranial magnetic stimulation to treat substance use disorders and pain. Moses is also a student advisor to Detroit vs Addiction, founded by a Wayne State medical student in 2017 to provide future students with an adequate foundation to identify and treat patients with substance use disorders, discuss overdose prevention with patients and recommend resources like naloxone, the synthetic drug that can be administered to reverse opioid overdose.

To read more about Dr. Greenwald’s work, visit med.wayne.edu.

This article appeared in Crain’s Detroit Business. Read more here.