At the neuromuscular junction, nAChRs initiate muscle contraction. During the last two decades, many unsuccessful attempts have been made to find compounds that would prevent cocaine from blocking proteins that are essential to brain function. A major difficulty in investigating these proteins is that, once activated, they remain in their active form for just a few milliseconds. The identification of the RNA compounds, Hess said, will enable the design of other smaller and more stable compounds for treating cocaine poisoning. The publication has estimated that 5 million Americans use the drug regularly.
Cocaine use can result in cardiovascular collapse, coma and death.
The cost to society each year of dealing with this problem is estimated to be many billion dollars in the United States alone. The design of mechanism-based drugs could proceed more rationally, through knowledge of the exact roles and timing of all the chemical players at the junctions between neurons and muscle cells or between neurons and other neurons. Cells that contain specific neurotransmitter receptors could be identified. The studies were supported, in part, by grants from the National Institutes of Health.