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Blockade of the Dopamine D3 Receptor Attenuates Opioids-Induced Addictive Behaviours Associated with Inhibiting the Mesolimbic Dopamine System

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Abstract

Opioid use disorder (OUD) has become a considerable global public health challenge; however, potential medications for the management of OUD that are effective, safe, and nonaddictive are not available. Accumulating preclinical evidence indicates that antagonists of the dopamine D3 receptor (D3R) have effects on addiction in different animal models. We have previously reported that YQA14, a D3R antagonist, exhibits very high affinity and selectivity for D3Rs over D2Rs, and is able to inhibit cocaine- or methamphetamine-induced reinforcement and reinstatement in self-administration tests. In the present study, our results illustrated that YQA14 dose-dependently reduced infusions under the fixed-ratio 2 procedure and lowered the breakpoint under the progressive-ratio procedure in heroin self-administered rats, also attenuated heroin-induced reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior. On the other hand, YQA14 not only reduced morphine-induced expression of conditioned place preference but also facilitated the extinguishing process in mice. Moreover, we elucidated that YQA14 attenuated opioid-induced reward or reinforcement mainly by inhibiting morphine-induced up-regulation of dopaminergic neuron activity in the ventral tegmental area and decreasing dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens with a fiber photometry recording system. These findings suggest that D3R might play a very important role in opioid addiction, and YQA14 may have pharmacotherapeutic potential in attenuating opioid-induced addictive behaviors dependent on the dopamine system.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Rifang Yang (Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology) for providing YQA14. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81573405 and U1502225), the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing (7212159), the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC0800907 and 2017YFC131040), the Medical Innovation Program (16CXZ033), and the Beijing Nova Program (xx2014A014).

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  1. Rong-Rong Hu, Meng-Die Yang, and Xiao-Yan Ding contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Toxicology and Medical Countermeasures, Beijing Key Laboratory of Neuropsychopharmacology, Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Beijing, 100850, China

    Rong-Rong Hu, Meng-Die Yang, Xiao-Yan Ding, Ning Wu, Jin Li & Rui Song

  2. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Hainan Hospital of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Sanya, 572013, China

    Rong-Rong Hu

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  1. Rong-Rong Hu
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Hu, RR., Yang, MD., Ding, XY. et al. Blockade of the Dopamine D3 Receptor Attenuates Opioids-Induced Addictive Behaviours Associated with Inhibiting the Mesolimbic Dopamine System. Neurosci. Bull. 39, 1655–1668 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-023-01059-0

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