14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers in the United States announce the development of a pair of drugs that they say could potentially work wonders in treating everything from pain to addiction. Details of their work are published in the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
The team, based at the Scripps Research Institute's (SRI) Florida campus say that the drug scaffolds act on the kappa opioid receptor (KOR), which is central to regulating the release of dopamine, a potent neurotransmitter. However, other drugs that target KOR also boost the production of beta arrestin2.
The latter is a molecule that leads to depression and dysphoria, and therefore limits the therapeutic potential of KOR-targeted medication. The two new drugs activate KOR without releasing arrestin-class molecules, says SRI associate professor and study leader, Laura Bohn.
“The importance of these [new drugs called] biased agonists is that we can manipulate the activation of one particular signaling cascade that produces analgesia, but not the other one that could lead to dysphoria or depression,” concludes SRI research associate and first study author, Lei Zhou, quoted by EurekAlert.