Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Perspective author's response: Uncompetitive/Fast Off-rate (UFO) mechanism of pathologically-activated neuroprotective drugs

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 8, page 989 (2007)Cite this article

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

I thank Professor Manev for his comments relating his work on RADA (receptor abuse-dependent antagonism)1 in 1990 to my recent article on PAT (pathologically activated therapeutics)2. In point of fact, my recent Perspective mentions that such drugs aimed to decrease overuse of receptors have been around for a quite a while — specifically, work on dilantin and lidocaine dating back at least to the early 1970s is mentioned. The idea was revisited for glutamate excitotoxicity in our 1988 and 1990 publications3,4,5. However, the mere idea of treating receptor overuse in glutamate excitotoxicity, as brought up previously by our group and by Professor Manev, misses the main point of my recent article: what is important here is the idea, first promulgated by my former graduate student H.-S. Vincent Chen in his 1990 doctoral thesis at Harvard Medical School and subsequently in our 1992 publication6, that a unique mechanism of action is needed in order to produce a clinically-tolerated drug to combat excitotoxicity. Our group has recently termed one such mechanism as 'UFO' drugs, representing an Uncompetitive/Fast Off-rate form of inhibition that preferentially blocks increasing (pathological) activity of a receptor, because of the uncompetitive nature of the antagonism, but allows normal activity to continue. For normal synaptic activity to remain relatively unaffected, the drug must have a fast off-rate and therefore not accumulate at the receptor.

Although not mentioned in the comments of Professor Manev, the PAT/UFO strategy has already met with considerable success, as witnessed by the recent clinical approval of the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate)-receptor antagonist memantine by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) of the European Union. We reported back in 1990 and 1992 that the PAT requirements were met in the case of memantine for excitotoxicty because of its UFO mechanism of open-channel block of NMDA-receptor-associated ion channels6. Thus, memantine blocks excessive (predominantly extrasynaptic) NMDA-receptor-operated channels while relatively sparing normal (synaptic) neurotransmission associated with NMDA-receptor stimulation6,7,8,9,10,11. Our group believes that in order to produce additional clinically-tolerated therapeutic agents, this UFO mechanism of action will become a cornerstone of future drug development, not only for drugs that act in the brain but for other types of pharmaceuticals as well.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Manev, H., Costa, E., Wroblewski, J. T. & Guidotti, A. Abusive stimulation of excitatory amino acid receptors: a strategy to limit neurotoxicity. FASEB J. 4, 2789–2797 (1990).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Lipton, S. A. Pathologically activated therapeutics for neuroprotection. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 8, 803–808 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Karschin, A., Aizenman, E. & Lipton, S. A. The interaction of agonists and noncompetitive antagonists at the excitatory amino acid receptors in rat retinal ganglion cells in vitro. J. Neurosci. 8, 2895–2906 (1988).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Hahn, J. S., Aizenman, E. & Lipton, S. A. Central mammalian neurons resistant to glutamate toxicity are made sensitive by elevated extracellular calcium: toxicity blocked by the N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist MK-801. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 85, 6556–6560 (1988).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Levy, D. I. & Lipton, S. A. Comparison of delayed administration of competitive and uncompetitive antagonists in preventing NMDA receptor-mediated neuronal death. Neurology 40, 852–855 (1990).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Chen, H.-S. V. et al. Open-channel block of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) responses by memantine: therapeutic advantage against NMDA receptor-mediated neurotoxicity. J. Neurosci. 12, 4427–4436 (1992).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Lipton, S. A. Prospects for clinically-tolerated NMDA antagonists: open-channel blockers and alternative redox states of nitric oxide. Trends Neurosci. 16, 527–532 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Chen, H.-S. V. & Lipton, S. A. Mechanism of memantine block of NMDA-activated channels in rat retinal ganglion cells: uncompetitive antagonism. J. Physiol. (Lond.) 499, 27–46 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Lipton, S. A. & Rosenberg, P. A. Mechanisms of disease: excitatory amino acids as a final common pathway for neurologic disorders. N. Engl. J. Med. 330, 613–622 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Chen, H.-S. V. et al. Neuroprotective concentrations of the NMDA open-channel blocker memantine are effective without cytoplasmic vacuolization following post-ischemic administration and do not block maze learning or LTP. Neuroscience 86, 1121–1132 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Chen, H.-S. V. & Lipton, S. A. The chemical biology of clinically tolerated NMDA receptor antagonists. J. Neurochem. 97, 1611–1626 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stuart A. Lipton is at the Burnham Center for Neuroscience, Aging, and Stem Cell Research, The Salk Institute, The Scripps Research Institute, and the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.,

    Stuart A. Lipton

Authors
  1. Stuart A. Lipton
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lipton, S. Perspective author's response: Uncompetitive/Fast Off-rate (UFO) mechanism of pathologically-activated neuroprotective drugs. Nat Rev Neurosci 8, 989 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2229-c2

Download citation

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2229-c2

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing