Trinity Research Fights Alcohol Use Disorder, Stress

 Alcohol use disorder remains a persistent and complex challenge for millions across the United States, a condition often exacerbated by stress, anxiety, and trauma. 

With a $200,000 award from the San Antonio Medical Foundation, a team of Trinity University researchers is aiming to redefine how stress impacts addiction relapse, potentially advancing treatment options. Kah-Chung Leong, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Trinity who’s heading the project, says the research specifically looks at the repurposing of oxytocin to address stress-induced alcohol relapse behaviors therapeutically. Their work seeks to overcome the limitations of current treatments and pave the way for more effective interventions.

"Stress interacts with addiction behavior quite dramatically," Leong says. "Periods of stress often drive individuals to relapse into drug-seeking behavior. Our research hopes to diminish the effect of stress on addiction behavior and break the cycle between stress disorders and relapse."

The project underscores Trinity University’s growing reputation as a leader in research, particularly through its ability to foster significant collaborations. On the project, Trinity will work alongside Mike Rubal, Ph.D., of the Southwest Research Institute, and Georgianna Gould, Ph.D., of UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. 

“This is a brand new collaboration across these three institutions, with Trinity being the lead institution,” Leong says. “That’s significant because it increases our visibility as a research institution, [specifically] as a biomedical research institution, and enhances our capabilities. The San Antonio Medical Foundation has funded projects with Trinity faculty before, but not with Trinity as the lead institution. This is the first time these three institutions are collaborating on an externally funded award to conduct biomedically relevant research.”

The research is especially significant given its potential impact on populations with high levels of stress-related disorders, such as veterans, many of whom reside in San Antonio. The project, which will unfold along a 12-month timetable under the grant starting this Spring 2025, could offer hope for those struggling to break free from the cycle of substance abuse. (The groundwork for the lab has been laid since Spring 2024).

Natalie Cornejo ’26, a neuroscience major from Cypress, Texas, is already hard at work in the lab on the project. An aspiring researcher who wants to get her doctorate one day, Cornejo says she couldn’t ask for a better opportunity as an undergrad than this.

“We want to see if, in a model where [a subject] had post-traumatic stress disorder and an alcohol use disorder condition, could we administer a drug that would bring down this alcohol seeking and alcohol relapse during stress? That’s really just an astounding question, and answering it is an astounding opportunity to have at a university, especially at the undergraduate level,” Cornejo says. “There’s a lot about this project that hasn’t really been done in our lab before.”

Cornejo says her team is eagerly anticipating the impact the grant will have in accelerating their research. “We've already ordered more equipment with the money we've been given from the foundation, and with the work going forward, we’re very excited to be collaborating with the Southwest Research Institute because not every university is near a big research institute like that,” she adds.

While this research has the potential to affect the lives of people across the world, the act of undergraduate research is already playing a profound role in the lives of students like Cornejo.

“I feel really happy to have had all of these opportunities with this project,” she says. “I spend about 25 hours every week doing research in this lab, and that's something that I'll just continue to increase going forward because I'm looking to do my undergraduate thesis based on this work as well.”

At Trinity, Cornejo says research is an essential part of hands-on learning: answering questions and questioning answers, and doing so in ways that have real-world applications.

“For our lab, we were sitting in the office one day and going, how can we administer oxytocin intranasally? It looks cool on paper, but how can we make that happen? And it's been a lot of learning all elements of the scientific process, finding all of these articles, seeing what other researchers are doing, sending emails to researchers at other institutions, and then ultimately putting these questions into practice,” Cornejo says. “Maybe we try something, and it doesn't work, but then we’re trying something else, which is really an authentic experience for an undergraduate student.”