Jean Lud Cadet is a Haitian-American psychiatrist at the

National Institute on Drug Abuse The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is a United States federal government research institute whose mission is to "advance science on the causes and consequences of drug use and addiction and to apply that knowledge to improve individual a ...

(NIDA), where he serves as

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Chief of the Molecular Neuropsychiatry Research Branch. His research considers the genetic, epigenetic and cellular bases of substance abuse. In 2020 he was selected as one of Cell Press' Most Inspiring Black Scientists in America.

Early life and education

Cadet is from

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

. He attended the Collège Notre-Dame for high school. After graduating high school, Cadet moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1970, where he joined

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

to complete a degree in medicine. He was a psychiatry resident at both

and in the

Mount Sinai Health System The Mount Sinai Health System is a hospital network in New York City. It was formed in September 2013 by merging the operations of Continuum Health Partners and the Mount Sinai Medical Center. The Health System is structured around eight hospit ...

Research and career

In 1992 Cadet moved to the

(NIDA), where he serves as

Chief of the Molecular Neuropsychiatry Research Branch. His early research considered the effects of drugs on human memory. He has shown that the molecular networks within the brain are impacted by the acute administration of addictive substances. In particular, Cadet has considered the cellular mechanisms that underpin addiction of psychostimulants. Cadet has looked at the influence of addictive substances on the expression of immediate early gene (IEGs), and shown that IEGs can be induced within minutes of activation. He has studied self-administration of

methamphetamine Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamph ...

, and shown that in striatal dopaminergic systems it is accompanied with markers of toxicity. This indicates that dopamine activates neurodegenerative processes within the brain, ''via'' the upregulation of neurotrophic factors and downregulation of glutamatergic systems.

Select publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cadet, Jean Lud American psychiatrists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni