Susanne Brummelte
Wayne State University, MI·Neuroscience
Opioid use disorder has risen sharply among pregnant women, and many are now treated with buprenorphine, a medication that partly activates one opioid receptor and blocks another. Buprenorphine leads to better infant outcomes than older treatments such as methadone, yet little is known about how it affects a woman's own transition into motherhood.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Pharmacology
- Topics
opioid use disorder
buprenorphine
morphine
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Compare how buprenorphine and morphine, given to female rats from before conception through early postpartum, alter the endogenous opioid system and neurochemistry of the maternal brain network.
- Map single-cell activity across maternal brain regions using whole (half) brain activity mapping, and test whether buprenorphine blocks the switch from aversive to rewarding perception of pups.
- Test whether oxytocin, a hormone linked to bonding, increases maternal–offspring interaction in opioid-exposed rat dams.
- Determine how the gut microbiome contributes to long-term health outcomes in offspring exposed to buprenorphine or morphine during gestation.
More about the research
Pregnancy rewires the brain so that caring for offspring becomes rewarding, and the body's own natural opioids help drive that change.
Why it matters
Because so many pregnant women with opioid use disorder receive buprenorphine, understanding its effects on the maternal brain matters for both mothers and infants. The work could clarify why reduced maternal care, higher offspring mortality and altered long-term outcomes appear in animal studies, and whether oxytocin could help restore mother–infant interaction, informing clinical care for a marginalized patient population.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rebecca Hofford
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test how depleting the gut microbiome in adolescent versus adult mice changes fentanyl self-administration, a measure of how strongly the drug reinforces drug-taking.
Jessica J Connelly
University of Virginia, VA·Neuroscience
Determine how the OxtrH transcript, a little-studied version of the oxytocin receptor gene, controls DNA methylation and other gene versions of Oxtr in prairie vole mothers after natural vaginal birth.
Rupa Radhakrishnan
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how prenatal opioid exposure affects the developing fetal brain over time, using repeated structural and functional fetal brain MRI in pregnancies of mothers with opioid use disorder.
The school
Wayne State University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $292M a year on research, 194 research doctorates a year.
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