Vol. 303, Issue 3, 1075-1085, December 2002

Benzamide-Type AMPA Receptor Modulators Form Two Subfamilies with Distinct Modes of Action

Amy C. Arai, Yan-Fang Xia, Gary Rogers, Gary Lynch and Markus Kessler

Department of Pharmacology, Southern Illinois University, Springfield, Illinois (A.C.A., Y.-F.X., M.K.); Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Irvine, California (G.R.); and Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Irvine, California (G.L.)

CX516 (BDP-12) and CX546, two first-generation benzamide-type AMPA receptor modulators, were compared with regard to their influence on AMPA receptor-mediated currents, autaptic responses in cultured hippocampal neurons, hippocampal excitatory postsynaptic currents, synaptic field potentials, and agonist binding. The two drugs exhibited comparable potencies in most tests but differed in their efficacy and in their relative impact on various response parameters. CX546 greatly prolonged the duration of synaptic responses, and it slowed 10-fold the deactivation of excised-patch currents following 1-ms pulses of glutamate. The effects of CX516 on those measures were, by comparison, small; however, the drug was equally or more efficacious than CX546 in increasing the amplitude of synaptic responses. This double dissociation suggests that amplitude and duration of synaptic responses are governed by different aspects of receptor kinetics, which are differentially modified by the two drugs. These effects can be reproduced in receptor simulations if one assumes that CX516 preferentially accelerates channel opening while CX546 slows channel closing. In binding tests, CX546 caused an approximately 2-fold increase in the affinity for radiolabeled agonists, whereas CX516 was ineffective. More importantly, even millimolar concentrations of CX516 did not influence the dose-response relation for CX546, suggesting the possibility that they bind to different sites. Taken together, the evidence suggests that benzamide modulators from the Ampakine family form two subgroups with different modes and sites of action. Of these, CX516-type drugs may have the greater therapeutic utility because of their limited efficacy in prolonging synaptic responses and in attenuating receptor desensitization.