Penn spinout EpiVario, a biotech company co-founded by Shelley Berger, PhD, the Daniel S. Och University Professor at Penn Medicine, received a $295,000 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to research small molecule inhibitors for reducing cocaine craving and preventing relapse in those addicted to cocaine. Cocaine Use Disorder (CUD) is characterized by the inability to stop or control cocaine use despite clinically significant impairment, distress, or other adverse consequences and affects approximately 1.5 million people in the US. EpiVario is developing neuroepigenetic modulators to treat memory-related addiction and psychiatric disorders and will use this grant to evaluate its portfolio of acetyl CoA synthetase-2 (ACSS2) inhibitors in animal models as potential treatments for CUD. Read more here.