Researchers study lobeline analogs to treat methamphetamine addiction

Lobeline, a compound that was under investigation for treatment of methamphetamine, didn't work — because it tasted so bad that volunteers resisted taking it. But Linda Dwoskin, Ph.D., of the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, who had been working with the drug for 10 years and was encouraged by the fact that it had no adverse effects on humans and did decrease the effects of methamphetamines in lab animals, didn't give up on finding an effective treatment. “Lobeline's failure was a blow,” said Dwoskin in an April report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “But I was still very invigorated by the idea that we had a novel medication target in VMAT2. Besides, I thought all along that we could design a much better medication than lobeline.” She is now conducting research that would produce a medication that would provide beneficial effects at lower dosage levels, avoid concurrent action at nicotine receptors, allow manufacture in pill form (so that patients wouldn't need to let it dissolve under the tongue but could swallow it without tasting it), and give a longer half‐life.
Source: The Brown University Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology Update - Category: Psychiatry Tags: News Source Type: research