title: Developmental potential for endomorphin opioidmimetic drugs.
abstract: Morphine, which is agonist for μ-opioid receptors, has been used as an anti-pain drug for millennia. The opiate antagonists, naloxone and naltrexone, derived from morphine, were employed for drug addiction and alcohol abuse. However, these exogenous agonists and antagonists exhibit numerous and unacceptable side effects. Of the endogenous opioid peptides, endomorphin(EM)-1 and endomorphin(EM)-2 with their high μ-receptor affinity and exceptionally high selectivity relative to δ- and κ-receptors in vitro and in vivo provided a sufficiently sequence-flexible entity in order to prepare opioid-based drugs. We took advantage of this unique feature of the endomorphins by exchanging the N-terminal residue Tyr(1) with 2',6'-dimethyl-l-tyrosine (Dmt) to increase their stability and the spectrum of bioactivity. We systematically altered specific residues of [Dmt(1)]EM-1 and [Dmt(1)]EM-2 to produce various analogues. Of these analogues, [N-allyl-Dmt(1)]EM-1 (47) and [N-allyl-Dmt(1)]EM-2 (48) exhibited potent and selective antagonism to μ-receptors: they completely inhibited naloxone- and naltrexone-induced withdrawal from following acute morphine dependency in mice and reversed the alcohol-induced changes observed in sIPSC in hippocampal slices. Overall, we developed novel and efficacious opioid drugs without deleterious side effects that were able to resist enzymatic degradation and were readily transported intact through epithelial membranes in the gastrointestinal tract and the blood-brain-barrier.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kobe Gakuin University, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-8586, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Okada
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kobe Gakuin University, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-8586, Japan.
authors.forename: Yuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tsuda
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biotechnology Center, University of Ferrara, 44100 Ferrara, Italy.
authors.forename: Severo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Salvadori
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Toxicology and Pharmacology, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA.
authors.forename: Lawrence H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Lazarus