Talk Description

This presentation outlines the mission, structure, and impact of the Division of Therapeutics and Medical Consequences (DTMC), established in response to a 1989 Congressional mandate to advance medication development for substance use disorders (SUDs). It describes how DTMC, modeled after a virtual pharmaceutical company, supports all phases of therapeutic development—from discovery through regulatory approval—to improve the management of SUDs and their medical consequences, including HIV. The presentation highlights DTMC’s strategic focus on developing safe and effective medications, biologics, devices, digital therapeutics, and behavioral therapies; its collaborations with industry and federal partners; its regulatory engagement with the FDA; and its record of notable contributions to advancing the treatment for opioid, stimulant, cannabis, and nicotine use disorders. The presentation includes opportunities for collaborations with DTMC and funding opportunities to conduct research in this therapeutic development for SUDs.

Speaker

David White, Ph.D. Dr. David White is the Associate Director of the Division of Therapeutics and Medical Consequences (DTMC) and Chief of the Medications Discovery and Toxicology Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). In these roles, he oversees DTMC’s preclinical medication discovery and safety assessment efforts for novel pharmacological treatments for substance use disorders. He also coordinates DTMC’s medications development contract program, serves as the Division’s pharmaceutical liaison, and leads DTMC’s business development activities. Dr. White brings more than two decades of leadership experience at NIDA, including service as Director of the Addiction Treatment Discovery Program from 2009 to 2023. Prior to joining NIDA in 2006, he conducted substance use disorder–related research as a research faculty member and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at Emory University School of Medicine, where he authored numerous peer-reviewed publications. He earned a Ph.D. in neuropharmacology from West Virginia University School of Medicine in 1999 and a B.A. in biology from West Virginia University in 1994.

Talk description

Medicinal cannabis use is widespread but poorly captured in electronic health records and rarely structured enough to support research. This talk presents our efforts to address that gap by applying large language models to millions of clinical notes, extracting structured data on cannabis use patterns, indications, and outcomes. The focus is on the translational potential of this approach: how AI tools can convert an underutilized clinical data source into a research-ready dataset capable of supporting observational studies, and to ultimately inform cannabis policy and improve patient care.

Johannes Thrul

Johannes Thrul, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has a joint appointment at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. He received his PhD in Psychology from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg and completed postdoctoral training at UCSF. His research focuses on substance use and addiction, as well as digital and mobile health research, including the use of smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment and just-in-time interventions. He leads multiple NIH-funded studies and co-directs a national longitudinal research registry to examine the health effects of medicinal cannabis. He has received numerous teaching awards at Johns Hopkins and serves in editorial and scientific advisory roles across the addiction and digital health fields.