On September 30, 2026, UC San Diego took a big step in addiction research. The university secured $12.6 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to launch the Polysubstance Addiction Research Center (PARC). This five-year project aims to break down the old walls between alcohol and drug studies.
PARC will not treat cocaine, oxycodone, and alcohol as separate problems. Instead, the center will study how addiction to these substances—and their combinations—works at the biological level. The plan is simple. Map out what these addictions share and what sets them apart. The team brings together psychiatry, medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, computational biology, and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. According to an independent summary on EurekAlert, PARC is a NIDA-funded initiative with its funding confirmed.
PARC is one of the few research centers in the U.S. specifically designed to study the combined effects of multiple addictive substances, rather than focusing on a single drug.
Olivier George, PhD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and PARC director, put it plainly. "Addiction research has traditionally been divided into separate areas—alcohol research on one side and drug research on the other. But that division doesn’t reflect how addiction occurs in the real world. People often use more than one substance, so we need to understand what these substances have in common, as well as what makes them different."
The center’s main tool is the "One-Individual Multiscale Atlas." This system pulls together data from genes, cells, brain circuits, organs, and behavior. Researchers will compare these findings with human genetic and brain imaging data. The goal is to see how changes in one area affect the rest. They want to connect the dots from molecules to real-life behavior.
PARC’s work stands on three main projects. The brain connectomics project will map how addiction rewires brain networks. The brain transcriptomics project will track changes in gene activity in specific brain cells. The gut-vagus multiomics project will look at how the gut and vagus nerve—connecting brain and body—might shape addiction behaviors. These projects will build a shared base of behavioral models, computational tools, and datasets for other scientists.
The center was officially announced on September 30, 2026, and brings together experts from psychiatry, medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, computational biology, and the VA San Diego Healthcare System.
George explained the approach. "Bringing psychostimulant drugs—a type of drug that speeds up the central nervous system, such as cocaine—opioids and alcohol research together in one center allows us to look across these boundaries and identify biological mechanisms that may be shared across substances."
The first goal is to find biological markers linked to addiction risk. Advanced computational and machine-learning tools will dig through the data. The team wants to know why some people fall deep into addiction and others do not.
But PARC is not stopping there. The second goal is to test if changing these biological targets can actually shift addiction behaviors. Researchers will use medications and other methods to probe pathways tied to cell stress, immune signals, and the gut-brain axis. They want to move from just watching to actually intervening.
George summed it up. "We want to go one step further than simply finding a biological difference associated with addiction. We want to test whether changing that biological process changes addiction-related behavior. That could help us identify targets that are more likely to translate into new treatments."
Infrastructure is the third focus. PARC will grow its addiction biobank, which already holds over 40,000 specimens from cocaine, oxycodone, and alcohol studies. This resource has powered 75 outside research projects so far. The center will also offer standardized behavioral models, computational tools, and shared datasets. All findings will be available through National Institutes of Health repositories. The aim is clear. Make results reproducible and open for future discovery.
Barbara Jung, MD, associate vice chancellor and dean of UC San Diego School of Medicine, called the award "a tremendous recognition of Olivier George’s leadership and his vision for bringing together researchers across disciplines to address the complexities of addiction." She said PARC will make UC San Diego a stronger hub for collaborative addiction research.
For years, addiction research has been split by artificial lines between substances and fields. PARC’s model is different. It builds on six years of teamwork among UC San Diego addiction scientists. The center will connect genes to behavior and brain to gut. The goal is to move past isolated findings and toward answers that matter.
Few centers are built from scratch to face the real mess of addiction. If PARC succeeds, it could change the field. The center aims to lay the groundwork for new prevention and treatment strategies that match the tangled reality of substance use disorders. The need is real. UC San Diego is stepping up.
