Medications Discovery Research Branch
Mission Statement
The Medications Discovery Research Branch conducts research on (1) the pharmacological mechanisms that underlie the behavioral effects of drugs that lead to their abuse, and (2) on the behavioral and neuropharmacological consequences of that abuse. Methods used include computer-aided drug design with state of the art synthetic organic chemistry techniques providing novel synthetic entities for studying specific neurochemical targets. Biological methods include quantitative ligand binding methods, in vivo microdialysis, receptor autoradiography and in situ hybridization, PCR, radioimmunoassay, and various in vitro assay systems. Behavioral methods used include intravenous drug self-administration, discriminative stimulus effects of drugs, and standard behavioral procedures for assessment of psychomotor stimulant effects. The application of these methods is designed to provide new insights into the functioning of psychoactive agents in the CNS and how these actions are transduced into drug abuse. This basic information can be applied to direct information on the discovery of compounds that may prove to be leads for the development of pharmacological treatments for drug abuse.
|
|
|
Medications Discovery Research Branch
|
|
