Identification of the First Marine-Derived Opioid Receptor "Balanced" Agonist with a Signaling Profile That Resembles the Endorphins.

Authors

Tyler A. Johnson, Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow
Laura Millan-Lobo, University of California , San Francisco, California, USA
Tao Che, University of North Carolina , Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Madeline Ferwerda, University of California , San Francisco, California, USA
Eptisam Lambu, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow
Nicole L. McIntosh, Dominican University of California, San Rafael, California, USAFollow
Fei Li, University of California , San FranciscoFollow
Li He, University of California , San Francisco
Nicholas Lorig-Roach, University of California , Santa CruzFollow
Phillip Crews, University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer L. Whistler, University of California , San FranciscoFollow

Department

Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Document Type

Article

Source

ACS Chemical Neuroscience

Publication Date

3-15-2017

ISSN

1948-7193

Volume

8

Issue

3

First Page

473

Last Page

485

Abstract

Opioid therapeutics are excellent analgesics, whose utility is compromised by dependence. Morphine (1) and its clinically relevant derivatives such as OxyContin (2), Vicodin (3), and Dilaudid (4) are "biased" agonists at the μ opioid receptor (OR), wherein they engage G protein signaling but poorly engage β-arrestin and the endocytic machinery. In contrast, endorphins, the endogenous peptide agonists for ORs, are potent analgesics, show reduced liability for tolerance and dependence, and engage both G protein and β-arrestin pathways as "balanced" agonists. We set out to determine if marine-derived alkaloids could serve as novel OR agonist chemotypes with a signaling profile distinct from morphine and more similar to the endorphins. Screening of 96 sponge-derived extracts followed by LC-MS-based purification to pinpoint the active compounds and subsequent evaluation of a mini library of related alkaloids identified two structural classes that modulate the ORs. These included the following: aaptamine (10), 9-demethyl aaptamine (11), demethyl (oxy)-aaptamine (12) with activity at the δ-OR (EC

PubMed ID

27744679

Rights

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

Publisher's Statement

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher.