The right track

LSUHSC-Shreveport

Today Nicholas E. Goeders is among the fathers of research on the relationship between stress and addiction. He's come a long way since his graduate school days, when a respected figure in the field of pharmacology urged him to abandon his interest in the neuropharmacological mechanisms of cocaine addiction.

Goeders never abandoned his initial passion, despite the unsolicited advice from one of the research "giants" of his field. That encounter occurred in 1981 while Goeders, then a graduate student, attended a Society for Neuroscience meeting in California.

"Someone who was a big name in the field-still is-came up to me and said 'the work you are doing for your dissertation, give it up. Find something else,' " Goeders recalls.

It was not until last fall that the individual again spoke to Goeders, who was by then a "big name" in research himself. During that recent conversation, the senior scientist acknowledged to Goeders that he is now redirecting his own research into the very area that he long ago dismissed as a scientific dead-end.

"I was really pleased," Goeders says. "A lot of graduate students might have been intimidated to change their research interest."

In another sense, however, Goeders hasn't come very far at all. He continues to quietly unravel the mysteries of addiction in his laboratory at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (his alma mater), in Shreveport (his hometown), where he remains today by choice.

After graduating from the former Jesuit High School in Shreveport, Goeders earned his B.S. degree from Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He then entered the relatively young School of Graduate Studies of the LSU Health Sciences in Shreveport, earning his Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1984.

As early as 1983 Goeders' research captured scientific attention. That year he published his first article while still a graduate student. And it appeared in Science , a prestigious feather-in-the-cap even for noted scientists.

Armed with his new Ph.D., in 1984 Goeders headed to The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neuroscience. He followed his mentor to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, but remained there only briefly.

In 1985 the self-described fan of all things LSU returned home to join the faculty of the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport.

Today he is professor and acting head of the department of pharmacology, toxicology and neuroscience and was elected by his peers as LSUHSC-S General Faculty President in 2003-04.

Throughout his career, Goeders' research productivity has earned him increasing professional stature. There are frequent invitations to lecture at scientific conferences and to serve on National Institutes of Health Study Sections. In 2003-04, he served on 11 study sections, reviewing the scientific merit of research proposals submitted for federal grants.

When he began his research into stress and addiction, no more than five labs were working in the same area. "But that's growing as others see we are on the right track," notes Goeders.

The "right track," in his view, allows translation of his laboratory findings of changes in the complicated interactions between the brain's neurotransmitters and receptor sites that are produced by stress and addiction into effective medications to treat individuals who battle addictions.

"I enjoy science and I hope ultimately that I will develop a product that will help humans. That's always been my goal," he says. After more than 20 years of research, Goeders is approaching that goal. He has used his basic research in a rat model to develop a product and is now exploring ways to bring it to the clinical trials phase.

The implications of his work are much broader than just helping cocaine addicts, the initial focus of his research. "I believe this will be useful in other addictions, too. For example, gambling addiction activates the stress system just like a drug like cocaine does. It's a conditioned response."

"If we can change how cues that trigger relapse in addicts affect the brain, we may be able to reduce the craving," he theorizes.