Researchers led by Jason Jaworski, PhD, and Michael Kuhar, PhD, both at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, have shown that CART peptide, a chemical that occurs naturally in both the rodent and human brain, reduces some effects of cocaine when additional amounts are administered to the region of the brain that is associated with reward and addiction. These findings, which appear online in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and which will be presented on November 8 at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, suggest CART peptide receptors in the brain could be targets for developing medications to treat cocaine abuse.
