Study upends conventional view of opioid mechanism of action - NIH-funded scientists find new molecular target for developing safer pain medications
Study upends conventional view of opioid mechanism of action - NIH-funded scientists find new molecular target for developing safer pain medications
A new discovery shows that opioids used to treat pain, such as morphine and oxycodone, produce their effects by binding to receptors inside neurons, contrary to conventional wisdom that they acted only on the same surface receptors as endogenous opioids, which are produced naturally in the brain. However, when researchers funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) used a novel molecular probe to test that common assumption, they discovered that medically used opioids also bind to receptors that are not a target for the naturally occurring opioids. (NIDA – National Institute on Drug Abuse, USA, 09.05.2018)