EN
Serotonin (5-HT) neurotransmission controls the brain physiology and contributes to the etiology of many neuropsychiatric disorders. One of the key modulators of 5-HT system is the 5-HT2C receptor which regulates feeding, satiety, mood and cognition as well as underlines the mechanisms of depression, schizophrenia and addiction (Filip and Bader 2009). Among abused drugs, cocaine addiction creates serious health and legal implications in developed world while no medication is approved for the treatment of cocaine addiction. Detailed preclinical pharmacological analyses with several selective 5-HT2C receptor ligands have provided consistent proofs that these receptors contribute to cocaine acute and repeated behaviors. In general, systemic pretreatment of 5-HT2C receptor agonists attenuates, while antagonists enhance cocaine-induced psychomotor activation, reward and reinforcement as well as subjective (discriminative stimulus) effects in laboratory animals (Filip et al. 2010). 5-HT2C receptors are also important neural mediators in the circuitry underlying cocaine-seeking and -taking behaviors since their stimulation attenuated conditioned hyperactivity to cocaine and the priming effect of acute cocaine, cue- or stresscontrolled cocaine-seeking. More importantly, the inhibitory action of 5-HT2C receptor agonists on the reinstatement of cocaine seeking, when extrapolated to abstinent human addicts, suggest therapeutic potential for these drugs as pro-abstinence and anti-relapse ones. The main shortcoming of 5-HT2C receptor agonists for cocaine addiction may be their inhibitory effects in motivated behaviors (including food consumption) as found in preclinical research (Neisewander and Acosta 2007) and recent clinical trials (Smith et al. 2009). This study was supported by the statutory activity of the Institute of Pharmacology Polish Academy of Sciences (Krakow)