An expanded role for how the FDA-approved drug memantine functions.

With the Jayaraman Lab at UT Health Houston, we show that memantine inhibits calcium-permeable AMPA receptors (CP-AMPARs). This is significant because memantine is an US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug that selectively inhibits NMDA-subtype ionotropic glutamate receptors (NMDARs) for treatment of dementia and Alzheimer’s. There is rising evidence that CP-AMPARs play a major role in neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, memantine may also be acting at these CP-AMPARs in addition to NMDARs. This will provide new foundations for drug design, and also expands the paradigm on how memantine functions.

Read more in our preprint here.