Drug discovery today
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Drug discovery today · Jun 2012
ReviewTargeting neuronal adenylyl cyclase for the treatment of chronic pain.
Pain research is currently undergoing dramatic changes. In the area of basic pain research, new discoveries have been made towards the understanding of pain transmission, modulation and plasticity. ⋯ In this review, I focus on activity-dependent potentiation in pain-related cortical areas and recent translational research on adenylyl cyclase subtype 1 (AC1) as a novel target for treating chronic pain. In particular, I discuss the AC1 inhibitor, NB001, which produces powerful analgesic effects in animal models of chronic pain by inhibiting chronic pain-related cortical potentiation.