A new beta-carboline compound shows great potential for alcoholism treatment. At present, no side effects caused by the new compound have been found in the trials on rats. The compound was developed by research team from Wisconsin in Milwaukee, US. With further successful tests and trials, the beta-carboline contained drug for alcoholism treatment can be available in five to six years, according to the research team.
Every year about $ 220 billion will be cost on the treatment of alcohol binge, a great sum of money. A more effective and safe treatment for alcoholism can reduce the cost in this aspect to a large scale. That’s one of the motivations for the researches working on the newly developed anti-alcoholism drug.
The new compound drives the research team to process a new and much more effective anti-alcoholism drug with little side effects. This aim is quite promising to be achieved according to the present research progress
The conventional drug for alcoholism aims to decrease the level of dopamine in bodies, while bring much adverse effects, including anhedonia that means no experiences of pleasure, depression, and what worse is addiction to the drug.
Much different from the traditional anti-alcoholism drugs, the newly developed compound is to target a brain receptor, by which the alcohol consumption along with anxiety and desire to alcohol can be decreased. Whilst bring no side effects as what the available anti-alcoholism drugs do.
The new beta-carboline compound is 3-ISOPBC•HCl. With trials and researches on primate animals, it showed that it was as effective as decreasing the alcohol consumption to a 90% level in the trials on rats. The primate experiments will go furtherly and are planned to finish in five months. Then the whole studies will be published in over a year.
Once the studies on 3-ISOPBC•HCl are finished, orally taken forms of new anti-binge drug will be released, including pills. But it still needs about five to six years to achieve that. Good news is that the drug is likely to be cheaper than the present ones, according to the research team, which may be because that the raw material of the drug is easier to access and related technology is more mature.
3-ISOPBC•HCl is developed by researches from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and led by chemist James Cook after years effort. Now the primate researches of the compound is undergoing with the cooperation of researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US. And the whole finding and present research process were presented at an American Chemistry Society meeting on 19 August in Boston by a graduate student from the original research team.