A plant compound, the Mexican herb salvia divinorum, is being tested as a possible medicinal treatment to help reduce the impact and side effects of drug addiction, specifically psychostimulants such as cocaine or methamphetamine.
This project is being led by Dr Bronwyn Kivell from the School of Biological Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. Dr Kivell was a 2010 HRC Emerging Research First Grant recipient for this study, Investigating Novel Compounds to Prevent Addiction, and has formed a collaboration with a medicinal chemist at the University of Kansas in the United States, and Professor Susan Schenk at Victoria University of Wellington.
Dr Kivell’s research team is screening a number of anti-addiction compounds that have the potential to form the basis of medications that help reduce cravings and prevent relapses. They are looking at ways of targeting a protein in the brain, called the kappa opioid receptor, which can alter a person’s perception of mood, reward and pain. While there are drugs that can activate these receptors, they typically have extreme side effects such as nausea, depression and sedation, so this study is investigating a new selective kappa opioid receptor activator, Salvinorin-A, isolated from the plant salvia divinorum.