Arpana Agrawal
James and Juanita Wittmer Professor
- Phone: 314-286-1778
- Email: arpana@nospam.wustl.edu
Additional Titles & Roles
- Psychiatry Research Committee, Chair
- McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, Operations Committee Member
Education & Training
- Ph.D.: Virginia Commonwealth University, 2004
Major Awards
- Dean’s Impact Award, 2024
- Henri Begleiter Award for Research Excellence, Research Society for Alcohol, 2022
- Theodore Reich Award for Early Career Contributions, International Society for Psychiatric Genetics, 2018
- Scott & Fuller Award for Early Career Contributions, Behavior Genetics Association, 2010
Research Interests
My research focuses on epidemiological and genomic approaches to the study of substance use and addiction. I am funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study how genetic and environmental factors work together to shape our liability to use cannabis and become addicted to it. In addition, I am co-PI of the Substance Use Disorders Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC). The goal of our working group is to identify common genetic variants that are related to liability for alcohol, nicotine, cannabis and other drug use disorders, and further to relate these loci (and their aggregate effect) to genetic risk for other psychiatric traits (e.g., personality) and disorders (e.g., depression).
Recent Publications
-
The effects of marital status, partner drinking, and sex differences on the likelihood of remission from alcohol use disorder
Garasky, C., Duncan, A., Dong, F., Pandey, G., Zhao, J., Balbona, J., Chan, G., Kuang, W., Kamarajan, C., Plawecki, M., Hesselbrock, V., Kuperman, S., Porjesz, B., Anokhin, A., Johnson, E., Agrawal, A., Salvatore, J., Kuo, S., Bucholz, K. & McCutcheon, V., Jan 1 2026, In: Alcohol and Alcoholism. 61, 1, agaf085.
-
Investigating the polygenic relationship between heavy cannabis use and schizophrenia in the All of Us Research Program
Austin-Zimmerman, I., Thorpe, H. H. A., Meredith, J. J., Khokhar, J. Y., Ge, T., Di Forti, M., Agrawal, A., Johnson, E. C. & Sanchez-Roige, S., Dec 17 2025, In: Psychological medicine. 55, e381.
-
Integrated single-cell multiomic profiling of caudate nucleus suggests key mechanisms in alcohol use disorder
Green, N. C., Gao, H., Chu, X., Yuan, Q., McGuire, P., Lai, D., Jiang, G., Xuei, X., Reiter, J. L., Stevens, J., Sutherland, G. T., Goate, A. M., Pang, Z. P., Slesinger, P. A., Hart, R. P., Tischfield, J. A., Agrawal, A., Wang, Y., Duren, Z. & Edenberg, H. J. & 1 others, , Dec 2025, In: Nature communications. 16, 1, 9070.
-
Psychiatric genome-wide association study enrichment shows promise for future psychopharmaceutical discoveries
Hatoum, A. S., Gorelik, A. J., Blaydon, L., Huggett, S. B., Chi, T., Baranger, D. A. A., Miller, A. P., Johnson, E. C., Agrawal, A. & Bogdan, R., Dec 2025, In: Communications Medicine. 5, 1, 176.
-
Trends in Hallucinogen-Related Emergency Department and Hospital Admissions, 2016 to 2023
Steinle, J. T., Gong, L., Buss, J. L., Shankar, S., Siegel, J. S., Cabassa, L. J., Ling, R., Huang, R., Adams, D. R., Cavazos-Rehg, P., Agrawal, A., Nicol, G. E., Grucza, R., Waken, R. J. & Xu, K. Y., Nov 13 2025, In: JAMA Network Open. 8, 11, e2543453.