Nitrosamines as nicotinic receptor ligands

Discovery of α7-Nicotinic Receptor Ligands by Virtual Screening of the Chemical Universe Database GDB-13

The chemical universe database GDB-13 enumerates 977 million organic molecules up to 13 atoms of C, N, O, Cl, and S that are virtually possible following simple rules for chemical stability and synthetic feasibility. Analogs of nicotine were identified in GDB-13 using the city-block distance in MQN-space (CBD(MQN)) as a similarity measure, combined with a restriction eliminating problematic str...

Regulation of Neuronal Nicotinic Receptor Expression by Novel Ligands and Mechanisms

Antinociceptive responses to nicotinic acetylcholine receptor ligands after systemic and intrathecal administration in mice.

The objective of this study was to determine which nicotinic receptor subtypes are involved in antinociception and their site of action. For that, the antinociceptive effects of several nicotinic receptor ligands were evaluated in the tail-flick test both after s.c. and intrathecal (i.t.) administration. Nicotine and other nicotine agonists increased tail-flick latencies in a dose-dependent man...

Iptakalim as a human nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) play many critical roles in nervous system function and have been implicated in a variety of diseases. Drugs acting at nAChRs, perhaps in nAChR subtype-selective manners, can be used to dissect receptor function and perhaps as medications. In the present study, we used patch-clamp whole-cell recording and pharmacological manipulations to evaluate effec...

Discovery of peptide ligands through docking and virtual screening at nicotinic acetylcholine receptor homology models.

Venom peptide toxins such as conotoxins play a critical role in the characterization of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) structure and function and have potential as nervous system therapeutics as well. However, the lack of solved structures of conotoxins bound to nAChRs and the large size of these peptides are barriers to their computational docking and design. We addressed these chall...