Our first database release of 2019 (2019.1) is now available. This update contains the following new features and content changes: Content Updates GtoPdb contains over 9,400 ligands, with around 7,200 have quantitative interaction data to biological targets. Just over 1,400…
Cannabinoid receptors respond to multiple endogenous fatty acid derivatives and are often divided into neuronal-associated CB1 receptors and immune cell-associated CB2 receptors. Both receptors are GPCR, coupled predominantly to Gi, and have cytoprotective properties. The predominant psychotropic agent in Cannabis, THC,…
The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology was represented at the recent BPS Pharmacology 2018 meeting (London, UK, 18-20 Dec 2018). Tuesday 18th Dec On Tuesday we had two significant presentations. Firstly, a late-breaking poster on the IUPHAR/MMV Guide to Malaria Pharmacology.…
Comments by Dr. Nicola J. Smith, National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow & Group Leader, Molecular Pharmacology Laboratory, Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Australia As is often the case with orphan GPCRs, assigning the endogenous ligand has been controversial for the…
A new facet of the human brain has been reported [1] involving a first example of somatic gene recombination in neurons, representing a normal neural mechanism whose disruption could underlie the most common (sporadic) forms of Alzheimer’s disease. Mosaic and…
The cellular thermal shift assay (CETSA) was introduced in July of 2013 as a means to investigate drug target engagement inside live cells and tissues (1). The underlying principle of CETSA is simple – it relies on the thermostability of…
At the beginning of October 2018 we held a meeting in Edinburgh focussed on the launch of the IUPHAR Guide to IMMUNOPHARMACOLOGY. Invited speakers contributed to productive discussions on the varying challenges and opportunities in immunopharmacology research. Immunopharmacology: The New…
Prof. Tracy Hussell Lung Disease: think about disease in a different way Tracy Hussell is Director, Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR) and Professor of Inflammatory Disease, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PT. To be healthy is…
Piezo channels (Piezo1 and Piezo2) are excitatory ion channels which respond directly to a variety of forms of mechanical stimuli. Two recent papers describe some of the critical roles of Piezo channels in sensory neuron transduction (1, 2). In the…
The receptor tyrosine phosphatase (RTP) family is a relatively small group of cell-surface proteins with a simple intracellular enzymatic function in the dephosphorylation of phosphotyrosine proteins. There is less known about the endogenous extracellular ligands which regulate RTP activities in…
The unfortunate French clinical trial disaster in which the FAAH inhibitor BIA 10-2747 (ligand ID 9001) left one participant dead and several others with serious neurological adverse events, occurred back in January 2016. However, the primary publication that describes the properties…
In this multi-author, multi-centre publication [1] lead by Denise Wootten and Patrick Sexton from the Monash Institute of Pharmacological Sciences, there is reported a 3.3 Angstrom structure of one of the more unusual G protein-coupled receptors. The CGRP receptor is…
This paper [1] extends previous studies demonstrating a key role of voltage-gated L-type Ca2+ channels in the modulation of activity-dependent gene transcription. Earlier work in cultured neurons had already shown that L-type channel activity is required to activate gene expression…
Our fourth database release of the year, 2018.4, is now available (n.b. the PubChem update statistics and link sets will be posted in a couple of weeks). This update contains the following new features and content changes: Content Updates GPCRs:…
July 2018 News, Updates and Hot Topics Database release 2018.3: Our third database release of the year, 2018.3, is now available. This update contains the following new features and content changes: Updates across several target classes. The existing Antimalarial targets…
The potassium channels KV7.2-KV7.5 (KCNQ2-5; GtoPdb target IDs 561-564) regulate neuronal excitability in the mammalian nervous system. The best characterised neuronal KV7 channels give rise to the M current (1) and are mediated predominantly by hetero-tetramers of KV7.2 and KV7.3…
A new type of deorphanization conundrum confronted in pairing the GPCR, MAS1 with the hormonal peptide angiotensin 1–7 (Ang1-7) was emphasised in recent IUPHAR reviews (1, 2). More evidence for disconnection between Ang1-7 and MAS1 is presented in the recent…
Every few years in the field of receptor pharmacology, a technological advance occurs that drives the field forward in terms of insight and understanding. Over the past couple of years, the cryo-EM technique (the development of which won the 2017…
What will Systems Biology look like in the future? Up to now, it has focussed on the development of standards, software tools and databases that enabled us to study the dynamics of physiological function mechanistically. However as these tools and…
The A1 adenosine receptor is, for most people, a molecular target they can become conscious of when they block it, which happens frequently. Rapid consumption of higher doses of caffeine, in products like Italian espresso or Turkish coffee, provokes a…
Our third database release of the year, 2018.3, is now available. This update contains the following new features and content changes: Content updates GPCRs: Adenosine receptors Chemokine receptors Cholecystokinin receptors Dopamine receptors Ghrelin receptors Opioid receptors GPR55 receptors NHRs: MRetinoic…
The Cannabis plant is a natural product from which more than 100 apparently unique metabolites (cannabinoids) have been identified. Many of these have been found in human plasma following consumption of Cannabis preparations. The most well-recognised is tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, because…
As some of our contacts may know, we hold hemi-annual meetings between IUPHAR, BPS the GtoPdb team, together with invited guests from our collaborators and NC-IUPHAR committee representatives. Covering ~ 2.5 days these usually take place in Paris or Edinburgh.…
19 June 2018 update. Announced only about a week after the events described below, yet a third clinical candidate, lanabecestat (AZD-3293, LY3314814) has also bitten the dust (4). The two PhIII trials were stopped because they were deemed unlikely to meet their…
Our second database release of the year, 2018.2, is now available. This update contains the following new features and content changes: Content updates GPCRs: 5-Hydroxytryptamine receptors Adenosine receptors Adrenoceptors Histamine receptors Opioid receptors Lysophospholipid (S1P) receptors Prostanoid receptors NHRs: Mineralocorticoid…
The A2A adenosine receptor is densely expressed in dopamine-rich areas of the brain and in the vasculature. It is the target of an adjunct medication for Parkinson’s Disease, istradefylline in Japan, an A2A receptor antagonist. The A2A adenosine receptor is an example…
The TRPV2 ion channel is the less well-characterised relative of the TRPV1 or vanilloid receptor that is activated by capsaicin. TRPV2 channels have many similarities to the TRPV1 channels, in that they are homotetrameric and respond to some of the same…
Negative allosteric modulators (NAMs) are of great interest in drug development because they offer improved scope for the production of receptor antagonists with enhanced subtype-selectivity. Indeed, many NAMs are already on the market or undergoing clinical trials. NAMs act by…
ASICs are potential drug targets of interest. Their activation mechanism has however remained elusive. ASICs are neuronal, proton-gated, sodium-permeable channels that are expressed in the central and peripheral nervous system of vertebrates. They form a subfamily of the Epithelial Na…
In order to stabilize the GPCR-G protein complex, an agonist must be bound to the receptor and the alpha subunit of the heterotrimer must be in a nucleotide-free state. Ground-breaking work by expert crystallographers made use of so-called mini G…
Contemporary drug discovery is dominated by two related themes. The first of these is target validation upon which the sustainability of pharmaceutical R&D (in both the commercial and academic sectors) crucially depends. The second is the size of the pool of human…
We are pleased to announce the third, beta-release of the Wellcome Trust-funded IUPHAR Guide to IMMUNOPHARMACOLOGY (GtoImmuPdb). Since our last release in August 2017 we have implemented developments that include disease summary pages, graphical browsing features and extensions and improvements…
The first GtoPdb and GtoImmuPdb beta release of 2018 includes plenty of target and ligand updates as well as announcing some important new features. As always, full content statistics for release 2018.1 can be found on the database about page.…
Within the vast GPCR superfamily, orphans are described as receptors devoid of known endogenous ligands. They have been labeled as 7 transmembrane proteins by sequence homology and dispatched accordingly in the different GPCR subfamilies. They have attracted much attention given…
A system of rigorous clinical trials and regulation exist to ensure that a new drug is safe and effective when reaching the market. However, natural human genetic variation(s) may cause individuals to respond differently to the same medication. A collaboration…
This has been split from an updated older post on Citation profiles for our NAR and Concise Guide papers and this section will be updated soon PubMed Commons In addition to keeping an eye on citations per se we also…
New avenues for GPCR drug discovery have emerged owing to recent advances in receptor pharmacology, technological breakthroughs in structural biology and innovations in biotechnology. A collaboration between the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen (home of the…
We were pleased to catch up with many GtoPdb/GtoImmuPdb users, aficionados, friends and affiliates at the BPS Pharmacology 2017 in the QEII Center in London. You can find our presentations and posters on Slideshare. Associated with this presence we have…
The sixth and final IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY release of 2017 has been published on 29th November. This release includes new content for the Guide to IMMUNOPHARMACOLOGY, which is currently still in beta phase. This release includes the following updates…
The GtoPdb team will be at the British Pharmacological Society’s flagship meeting, Pharmacology 2017, in London, December 11-13th 2017. We are pleased to have our own stand at this meeting and will be present during the refreshment breaks and poster…
This blog-post will discuss the major developments planned for the Guide to IMMUNOPHARMACOLOGY as we look ahead to our next beta-release (v3.0) in early 2018. This month, the updated IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY NAR Database Issue has been published online…
The mucolipin subfamily of Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) channels, which consist of TRPML1, TRPML2, and TRPML3 (a.k.a. MCOLN1- 3), are Ca2+-permeable cation channels localized in intracellular endosomes and lysosomes. In response to cellular stimulation, TRPMLs mediate Ca2+ release from the…
Concise Guide to Pharmacology Simplifies Drug Discovery Research The Concise Guide to PHARMACOLOGY 2017/18 (CGTP), which is produced from a subset of the data contained in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY database, is now available in the British Journal of…
The following blog post acts as supplementary data to the 2018 NAR Database Issue Journal to Database connectivity The citation provenance of all entity records and contextual comments selected by the curators and NC-IUPHAR members in GtoPdb is supported by…
The following blog post acts as supplementary data to the 2018 NAR Database Issue GtoPdb PubChem Content The GtoPdb PubChem integration strategy has been previously outlined (1). Since 2015 we have made nine PubChem submissions for new releases of our…
As one of the first propositions for GPCRs being present in mitochondrial membranes, a recent report from Robert Friedlander and colleagues [1] follows on from previous work characterising synaptic and extrasynaptic mitochondria in human cortex (post-mortem samples) and their role…
Lysophospholipids (LPs) have myriad roles as extracellular signals that activate cognate G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) (2). LPs for which receptors have been reported include lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) (receptors: LPA1-6), sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P1-5), lysophosphatidyl serine (LPS1-3, 2L (2L is a pseudogene…
GPCRs of all classes are widely thought to form homodimers, heterodimers and higher-order oligomers. The functional significance of dimerization is well understood for Class C receptors but less certain for the other GPCR classes, including the rather unconventional class F…
The TREK subfamily of K2P channels (K2P2, K2P4 and K2P10) pass background potassium currents that modulate the excitability of neuronal cells and cardiac myocytes. In recent years, these channels have received significant attention as potential drug targets. This is in…
GtoPdb has been traditionally focused on the pharmacology associated with human diseases (i.e. we have not been funded to cover anti-infectives). In 2017 we have been exploring possible funding opportunities to extend into expert curation of anti-infectives, particularly in the…
guidetopharmacology blog 