Program overview
Patricia Sue Grigson, PhD, MS, presents the Fall 2024 Penn State College of Medicine Dean's Lecture.
Credit
CME credit is available for those who attended live.
Penn State College of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. Penn State College of Medicine designates this live activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™.
Learning objectives
- Understand the magnitude of the problem of addiction .
- Learn about individual vulnerabilities to substance use disorder (SUD) and addiction.
- Evaluate GLP-1 receptor agonists as a novel treatment for the disease of SUD and addiction.
Patricia 'Sue' Grigson, PhD, MS
Professor and Chair, Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences
Interim Chair, Department of Pharmacology
Director, Penn State Addiction Center for Translation
Penn State College of Medicine
Dr. Patricia “Sue” Grigson earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Elizabethtown College, her Master of Science and her PhD in Biopsychology from Rutgers University in the study of reward with Dr. Charles Flaherty, and then completed her postdoctoral training at Penn State College of Medicine in the study of taste and motivated behavior with Dr. Ralph Norgren.
Thereafter, she accepted a tenure-track faculty position at Penn State College of Medicine, where she is now a tenured professor and chair of the Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences and interim chair of the Department of Pharmacology. Over this time, Dr. Grigson and her students have studied the comparison of natural rewards with addictive substances, individual vulnerabilities to addiction, factors that reduce or accentuate the development of addiction and, along with her colleagues, novel interventions for the treatment of the disease in rats and humans.
Dr. Grigson has received 30 years of nearly continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health and via CURE funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. She is the recipient of a MERIT Award and currently is MPI of a UG3/UH3 award from the HEALing Initiative to test the safety and efficacy of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists for the treatment of opioid use disorder in animal models and in humans.
Among other awards, Dr. Grigson was the recipient of the College of Medicine’s Annual Hinkle Society Junior Investigator Award in 2000, and in 2004 she received the Alan N. Epstein Research Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior. Dr. Grigson co-founded the Penn State Hershey Commission for Women and she co-founded and is the director of Penn State Addiction Center for Translation.