Screening the receptorome to discover the molecular targets for plant-derived psychoactive compounds: a novel approach for CNS drug discovery.
Pharmacology & therapeutics May 1, 2004 Bryan L Roth, Estela Lopez, Scott Beischel et al. 98 citations
Psychoactive plants alter perception, emotion, and cognition, and understanding their molecular mechanisms may reveal the biological basis of consciousness and provide validated targets for central nervous system drug discovery. This review describes an unbiased, discovery-based approach that screens the main active ingredients of psychoactive plants against the 'receptorome'—the portion of the proteome encoding receptors. It overviews the receptorome, describes public-domain in silico resources, and details new tools for mining data from the National Institute of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program's K(i) Database. Three case studies on Hypericum perforatum, Salvia divinorum, and Ephedra sinica illustrate the approach, and recommendations for future studies are offered.