Because progress in the field of transporters has been extraordinary, this volume will focus on recent advances in our understanding of the structure, function, physiology, and molecular biology of membrane transporters. There will be an emphasis on transporters as molecular targets for drug delivery and disposition in the body.

Drug Addiction: From Basic Research to Therapy provides a comprehensive overview of physiological, biochemical, and genetic pathways underlying drug addiction, and resultant efforts to develop novel treatment strategies dealing with drug addiction and other CNS disorders where the neurophysiological processes overlap, such as treatment of pain. Based on the AAPS-NIDA Frontiers in Science Symposium Drug Addiction: From Basic Research to Therapies, this volume, representing focuses on the translation of fundamental addiction research to a variety of treatments, bringing together scientists with widely ranging expertise in synthetic and computational chemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and neuroscience with researchers in drug discovery and development, drug targeting, and quantitative therapeutics."

Because progress in the field of transporters has been extraordinary, this volume will focus on recent advances in our understanding of the structure, function, physiology, and molecular biology of membrane transporters. There will be an emphasis on transporters as molecular targets for drug delivery and disposition in the body.

Drug addiction is a chronic disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and taking despite serious negative consequences. Association studies have identified a number of candidate genes harboring variants associated with susceptibility to addiction, but the causative variants frequently remain unknown. A solution to the challenge of identifying causative variants is the thorough characterization of functional genetic polymorphisms and their effects on regulation of candidate genes. I focused on candidate genes for drug addiction (ARRB2, DRD2, and DRD3) and made some novel and significant findings: The effects of two intronic SNPs in the human dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene, previously shown to alter DRD2 alternative splicing, were confirmed in human brain autopsy tissues obtained from a population of cocaine abusers and controls. The same SNPs were significantly associated with cocaine abuse. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of the functional genetic variation in important candidate genes and have the potential to improve the prevention and treatment of drug addiction and other psychiatric disorders.