History
Nicotine has been known for centuries for its intoxicating effect. It was first isolated in 1828 from the tobacco plant by German chemists, Posselt and Reimann.
The discovery of positive effects from nicotine on animal memory was discovered by in vivo researches in the middle of the 1980s. Those researches led to a new era in studies of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) and their stimulation but until then the focus had mainly been on nicotine addiction. The development of nAChR agonists began in the early 1990s after the discovery of nicotine’s positive effects. Some research showed a possible therapy option in preclinical researches. ABT-418 was one of the first in a series of nAChR agonists and it was designed by Abbott Labs. ABT-418 showed significant increase of delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) performance in matured Macaque apes of different species and sex. ABT-418 has also been examined as a possible treatment to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: those experiments showed positive outcomes.
One of the first nAChR active compounds, besides nicotine, that was marketed as a drug was galantamine, a plant alkaloid that works as a weak cholinesterase inhibitor (IC50=5µM) as well as an allosteric sensitizer for nAChRs (EC50=50 nM).
Read more about this topic: Nicotinic Agonist
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)