The Coming Storm – Increasing Cannabis Use Disorder

Sponsored by The Hans Lowenbach, MD Memorial Endowment Fund Laura Jean Bierut, M.D. is the inaugural Alumni Endowed Professor at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Bierut is a physician scientist and internationally recognized expert on the genetics of substance use disorder. Her work has spanned a wide range of research from exploring the impact of policy on substance use to discovering genetic variation that influence the risk of developing substance use disorder. She has served on the Advisory Counsel for the National Institutes of Health National Human Genome Research Institute and the Advisory Counsel for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). She has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the scientific basis of regulating tobacco products as part of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, and for many years she served as Co-Chair of the Smoking Cessation Panel for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Dr. Bierut is an active member of the NIDA Genetics Consortium, a national group of scientists who are leading NIDA's efforts to understand genetic contributions to substance use disorder. Dr. Bierut led the initial studies which discovered genetic variation that increases a smoker's risk for nicotine use disorder. In collaboration with other groups, these risk factors have subsequently been identified as the strongest genetic risk factors for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, demonstrating the important convergence of the underlying biologic risk factors for smoking behaviors and smoking-related diseases. Dr. Bierut is now actively involved in efforts to translate these scientific discoveries into clinical care. In recognition of her research accomplishments, she was awarded the 2014 Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease, the 2018 Langley Award for Basic Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, and the 2022 Marian W. Fischman Lectureship Award from the College on Problems with Drug Dependence. In 2024 she was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.