Current Drug Targets - Volume 11, Issue 4, 2010

Addiction and Pain: Cannabinoid and Opioid Interactions The goal of this special issue of Current Drug Targets is to report and update our current knowledge in molecular and functional aspects of cannabinoid and opioid interactions in relation to addiction and pain. It has been known for several years that cannabinoids and opioids share several pharmacological actions such as antinociception, sedation, hypothermia and Read More

Recently, the presence of functional interaction between the opioid and cannabinoid system has been shown in various pharmacological responses. Although there is an increasing interest for the feasible therapeutic application of a co-administration of cannabinoids and opioids in some disorders (i.e. to manage pain, to modulate immune system and emotions) and the combined use of the two drugs by drug abusers is becoming l Read More

Although the first studies regarding the endogenous opioid system and addiction were published during the 1940s, addiction and cannabinoids were not addressed until the 1970s. Currently, the number of opioid addiction studies indexed in PubMed-Medline is 16 times greater than the number of cannabinoid addiction reports. More recently, functional interactions have been demonstrated between the endogenous cannabinoid an Read More

3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “ecstasy”) is an amphetamine derivative with psychostimulant properties. This substance is widely used around the world by young adults in recreational settings. One of the most remarkable characteristics of ecstasy users is the concurrent consumption of several other drugs of abuse including psychostimulants, alcohol, tobacco, LSD, cannabis, and opioids. This poly-drug pa Read More

Nicotine addiction is a complex behavioural alteration, in which many neuronal pathways and neurotransmitters are involved. For a long time, dopamine has been considered one of the most important neurotransmitters in mediating the rewarding effects of nicotine. In addition, a great amount of research suggests that the endogenous cannabinoid and opioid systems play an overall modulatory effect on the reward circ Read More

Cannabinoids and opioids are known to strictly interact in many physiological and pathological functions, including addiction. The endogenous opioid system is significantly influenced by maternal or perinatal cannabinoid exposure, major changes concerning operant behaviour in adult animals. Copious data suggests that adolescence is also a particularly sensitive period of life not only for the initiation of abusing illicit drugs, but Read More

Among several pharmacological properties, analgesia is the most common feature shared by either opioid or cannabinoid systems. Cannabinoids and opioids are distinct drug classes that have been historically used separately or in combination to treat different pain states. Indeed, it is widely known that activation of either opioid or cannabinoid systems produces antinociceptive properties in different pain models. Moreover, se Read More

Epithelial ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death for gynecological cancer in most of the Western world; lethality ensues from the occurrence of occult metastasis within the peritoneal cavity, a process requiring the acquisition of capacity for migration and invasiveness by ovarian tumor cells (metastatic phenotype), and characterized by a complex series of interrelated cellular events. Unlike most carcinomas that dediffer Read More

T-cell lymphomas (TCL) are characterized by poor response to chemotherapy and generally poor outcome. While molecular profiling has identified distinct biological subsets and therapeutic targets in B-cell lymphomas, the molecular characterization of TCL has been slower. Surface markers expressed on malignant T-cells, such as CD2, CD3, CD4, CD25, and CD52 were the first TCL-specific therapeutic targets to be discovered Read More

It has been well recognized that inflammatory responses are part of pathogenesis for various disorders such as autoimmune diseases. For example, multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of central nervous system that is presumably caused by activated T cells specific for myelin antigens. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is also a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by synovial inflammation in Read More

γ-secretase is an intramembranous multi-protein complex that cleaves many type-I proteins with critical roles in neuronal function. In Alzheimer's disease (AD) interest in γ-secretase comes, in part, from the fact that this complex is responsible for the last cleavage step of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) that generates the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ). Aβ represents the primary component of the amyloid plaque, one of Read More