Department of Biology

Indiana University biologist Mengting Han has received a prestigious $2.38 million Avenir Award in Genetics and Epigenetics of Substance Use from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The five-year award will support Han’s research into how the spatial regulation of RNA localization and translation in neurons contributes to opioid use disorder.

NIDA’s Avenir Award is made through NIH’s DP1 grant mechanism, which is designed to support investigators pursuing high-risk, high-reward research with the potential for unusually broad impact. “Avenir” is the French word for “future”, and this award represents NIDA’s commitment to supporting early-stage investigators who represent the future of addiction science. Han, who joined the Department of Biology as a tenure-track assistant professor through the F100 program in August 2025, received the award for her project “Interrogating RNA localization and local translation during synaptic plasticity induced by opioid use disorder.”

Opioid use disorder (OUD) remains a major public health challenge in the United States. One of the greatest challenges in treating OUD is the persistent vulnerability to relapse, which can remain long after opioid use has stopped. This persistence is associated with long-lasting maladaptive changes in neural circuits produced through synaptic plasticity—the ability of connections between neurons to strengthen or weaken in response to stimulation. A comprehensive understanding of the molecular basis of synaptic plasticity induced by OUD is key to develop new therapeutic strategies to overcome this urgent challenge in OUD treatment.

Han’s research aims to elucidate how RNA localization and local translation, a key regulatory mechanism of spatiotemporal gene expression, contribute to the synaptic plasticity induced by OUD. This biological question remains understudied in the drug abuse research field. To address this critical knowledge gap, Han proposed to establish a multidisciplinary platform that integrates cutting-edge multi-omics technologies, novel CRISPR-mediated tools, and established mouse models of OUD to profile and perturb synaptic RNA localization and local translation for functional studies. “I feel strongly that addressing this biological question will catalyze new therapeutic strategies for OUD by correcting dysregulated RNA localization to reverse OUD-induced maladaptive synaptic plasticity and prevent relapse,” Han said. She envisions that the proposed research will transform the drug abuse field, open new therapeutic avenues for treating addiction, and establish a broadly applicable framework for studying the molecular basis underlying other substance use disorders.