Abstract
Clozapine is the prototype atypical antipsychotic drug, producing little or no extrapyramidal side effects, while improving negative symptoms of psychosis. Clozapine's high affinity for serotonin receptors has been hypothesized to confer the unique antipsychotic properties of this drug. Recently, we demonstrated that both typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs are inverse agonists at constitutively active 5-hydroxytryptamine2A (5-HT2A) receptors. To determine whether inverse agonist activity at 5-HT2Creceptors plays a role in antipsychotic efficacy, typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs were tested for inhibition of basal inositol phosphate production in mammalian cells expressing rat or human 5-HT2C receptors. Atypical antipsychotic drugs (sertindole, clozapine, olanzapine, ziprasidone, risperidone, zotepine, tiospirone, fluperlapine, tenilapine) displayed potent inverse agonist activity at rat and human 5-HT2C receptors. Typical antipsychotic drugs (chlorpromazine, loxapine, thioridazine, prochlorperazine, perphenazine, mesoridazine, trifluperidol, fluphenazine, spiperone, haloperidol, pimozide, penfluridol, thiothixene) were devoid of inverse agonist activity, with the exception of loxapine. We review the evidence that loxapine has unique properties characteristic of both atypical and typical antipsychotic drugs. Several typical antipsychotic drugs (chlorpromazine, thioridazine, spiperone, thiothixene) displayed neutral antagonist activity by reversing clozapine inverse agonism. These data suggest that 5-HT2C inverse agonist activity is associated with atypical antipsychotic drugs with moderate to high affinity for 5-HT2C receptors, and imply that effects of atypical antipsychotic drugs on the 5-HT2C receptor may play a role in their unique clinical properties. These data also imply that dysfunction of brain 5-HT2C receptor systems may be one of the factors involved in the etiology of psychosis.
Footnotes
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Send reprint requests to: Katharine Herrick-Davis, Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience, MC-136, Albany Medical College, 47 New Scotland Ave., Albany, NY 12208. E-mail: daviskh{at}mail.amc.edu
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↵1 Supported by United State Public Health Services Grants MH-57019 (to K.H.-D.) and MH-56650 (to M.T.).
- Abbreviations:
- 5-HT
- 5-hydroxytryptamine
- CAM
- constitutively active mutant
- GPCR
- G-protein-coupled receptor
- DMEM
- Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium
- IP
- inositol phosphate
- Received April 21, 2000.
- Accepted June 29, 2000.
- The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
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