Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0042963 (vomiting)
 31,883 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Substance P (SP)-neurokinin-1 (NK1) receptor pathways have been implicated in the pathophysiology of emesis and depression. Autoradiographic studies in monkey and human brains have shown a high expression of NK1 receptors in regions important for the regulation of affective behaviors and the neurochemical response to stress. Furthermore, clinical studies demonstrated that treatment with the SP (NK1 receptor) antagonist (SPA) aprepitant (also known as MK-0869) significantly improves depression symptoms and reduces the incidence of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. An important objective of all neuroscience drug discovery and development programs is to establish the correlation between dose, receptor occupancy, and the observed clinical effect (the dose-response relationship). These goals can be achieved using radioactive receptor-specific tracers and dynamic noninvasive brain imaging modalities, such as positron emission tomography (PET). In the SPA program, a tracer [18F]SPA-RQ was chosen for PET studies on the basis of several criteria, including high affinity for the NK1 receptor, low nonspecific binding, and good blood-brain barrier penetration. PET imaging studies in rhesus monkeys and humans confirmed these tracer features and established the usefulness of this probe for in vivo NK1 receptor occupancy studies. Subsequent PET occupancy studies in humans predicted that very high levels of central NK1 receptor occupancy (> 90%) were associated with therapeutically significant antidepressant and antiemetic effects. Future PET imaging studies will focus on quantification of NK1 receptor expression in depressed patients, both before and after successful treatment with antidepressants.
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PMID:Imaging substance P receptors (NK1) in the living human brain using positron emission tomography. 1256 39

Substance P (SP) is a neurotransmitter and neuromodulator that mediates its effects in the brain predominantly via the neurokinin-1 receptors (NK1Rs). NK1Rs and SP have been shown clinically to be involved in nausea and emesis after chemotherapy (CINV) and have been implicated preclinically in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders but unlike CINV their blockade in these conditions does not have proven clinical value. We investigated whether age and gender affects NK1R binding potential (NK1R-BP; an index of receptor availability) in the living human brain using PET and [18F]SPA-RQ, a highly specific NK1R antagonist. Forty-five healthy volunteers (35 male and 10 female), aged between 19 and 55 years were studied. NK1R-BP was estimated using the simplified reference tissue model with cerebellum as a reference region. A regression analysis indicated that that a loss of NK1R is associated with normal ageing as shown by decreased NK1R-BP (average rate 7% per decade). Statistically significant negative associations between age and NK1R-BP were observed in temporal, parietal and frontal cortex, hippocampus and parahippocampal formation. In addition preliminary data were obtained suggesting possible gender differences in NK1R-BP in the cortex and putamen with females having a lower NK1R-BP. The exact physiological significance of these results remains to be elucidated but conceptually they could be involved in age-related CNS disorders or those with gender differences in prevalence.
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PMID:Gender and age affect NK1 receptors in the human brain - a positron emission tomography study with [18F]SPA-RQ. 1657 46

Neurotransmission mediated by substance P (SP) and NK(1) receptor has been implicated in the pathophysiology of analgesia, emesis and diverse neuropsychiatric conditions including depression and anxiety disorder. Several lines of clinical trials using NK(1) receptor antagonists have been conducted to date, and the efficiency of preclinical assessments for proof of concept and dose optimization could be greatly increased by configuring an in vivo analytical system that permits quantitative mapping of NK(1) receptors in the brains of small-size laboratory animals expressing "human-like" NK(1) receptors. Hence, we investigated the applicability of experimental animals, ranging from rodents to primates, to positron emission tomographic (PET) measurements with [(18)F]fluoroethyl-SPA-RQ, a modification of a recently established radioligand for NK(1) receptors. A pharmacokinetic assay could be performed for a rhesus monkey in an awake condition, which allows the circumvention of influences of anesthesia on SP neurotransmission. Coregistration of PET and magnetic resonance images acquired by small-animal-dedicated devices enabled detailed localization of NK(1) receptors in the gerbil and marmoset brains. The present study also revealed the potentials of SDZ NKT 343 as an antagonist for central NK(1) receptors. In conjunction with additional in vitro and ex vivo autoradiographic observations, our in vivo results have demonstrated a similarity in the binding pattern among the animals examined, justifying cross-species extrapolation of PET findings on the SP-NK(1) pathway.
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PMID:In vivo mapping of substance P receptors in brains of laboratory animals by high-resolution imaging systems. 1723 May 54