Substance abuse and addiction represent a huge burden to society and the need for effective addiction medications is urgent. There are not any approved therapies for many types of addiction such as methamphetamine or cocaine addiction.
Researchers had developed a promising lead peptide compound as a potential addiction therapy that does not directly target drug receptors, but rather targets the association and learning mechanisms underlying relapse to addictive behaviors. These learning mechanisms have been shown to be critical for both the craving and the relapse aspects of addiction.
With the long-range goal to conduct a human clinical trial using the lead peptide compound, this project’s purpose was to perform additional non-clinical experiments, positioning the research for a follow-on formal preclinical safety and toxicity program, in order to proceed quickly toward further regulatory approval.
The team completed rat and dog intravenous studies to establish a proper therapeutic index prior to entering discussions with companies and the project demonstrated effective blockade of long-term depression in rats following intranasal application of the peptide.
The results provide proof of principle evidence for using intranasal application as a viable and non-invasive route for delivering therapeutic peptides.