Cocaine is a potent psychostimulant and repeated cocaine use can lead to addiction and other adverse health consequences. According to the most recent results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the percent of people aged 12 or older currently using cocaine has shown little change since 2007 (National Survey on Drug Use and Health, September 2017). This finding indicates that despite efforts over the past decade to decrease the number of people who use cocaine, its use continues to be a significant economic, social, and healthcare burden. Furthermore, the number of deaths from cocaine overdose has increased steadily between 2012 and 2015, and the number of cocaine deaths in 2015 was the second highest since 1999 (National Center for Health Statistics, CDC Wonder).

A major obstacle in the treatment of addiction to cocaine and other drugs of abuse is relapse to drug use after periods of abstinence. In former cocaine users, drug craving and relapse during abstinence are often triggered by cues and stimuli that were previously associated with cocaine use [1]. This clinical scenario is studied by using the reinstatement model in which laboratory animals are tested for reinstatement of drug seeking after exposure to different manipulations such as drug primes or drug cues previously paired with drug intake. The advantage of using such rodent models has been to test whether certain drugs or peptides will decrease drug-seeking behavior with the hope that success in the rodent model will eventually translate into human clinical trials. This is especially important for cocaine abuse since there are currently no efficacious clinically approved treatments.

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