Neuroproteomics in Paving the Pathway for Drug Abuse Research

Abstract

Neuroproteomics, as a sub-discipline of proteomics, has enlightened the pathway for the study of different complicated diseases and brain disorders. Since four decades, various analytical and quantitative techniques have been used to cure problems related to brain and memory. Brain has a complex structure with various cells and cell types, the expressing proteins and suppressing factors too. Drug addiction is one of the main health concerns as it causes physiological changes in brain and affects its different parts. Some of these drugs like cocaine, marijuana, nicotine and alcohol not only affect memory and brain cells but also lead to expression and suppression of unwanted and beneficial proteins respectively. A variety of techniques involving separation techniques, quantification techniques and analytical techniques are used along with the combination of bioinformatics and magical tools for analyzing different aspects of brain parts especially proteome of the brain cells. Moreover, different animal models preferably those resembling human beings are routinely used in neuroproteomics to study the effects of different drugs on the brain proteome. Different experiments have already been performed by the researchers on drug abuse that helped massively in estimating not only the effects of drug addiction on the brain of highly complex organisms (human beings) but also to propose different therapeutics.