Use of Preclinical Drug Vs. Food Choice Procedures to Evaluate Candidate Medications for Cocaine Addiction

• Published in: Current treatment options in psychiatry Vol. 2; no. 2; pp. 136 - 150
• Main Authors: Banks, Matthew L., Hutsell, Blake A., Schwienteck, Kathryn L., Negus, S. Stevens
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.06.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Addictive behaviors; Amphetamines; Behavior; Clinical trials; Cocaine; Drug abuse; Drug addiction; Drug dosages; Drug therapy; FDA approval; Laboratory animals; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Neurology; Psychiatry; Section Editor; Substance abuse treatment; Substance Use Disorders (FG Moeller; Topical Collection on Substance Use Disorders; Medication; Choice; Addiction; Nonhuman primate; Preclinical model; medication; nonhuman primate; preclinical model; choice; addiction
• ISSN: 2196-3061; 2196-3061
• DOI: 10.1007/s40501-015-0042-9

Opinion statement Drug addiction is a disease that manifests as an inappropriate allocation of behavior towards the procurement and use of the abused substance and away from other behaviors that produce more adaptive reinforcers (e.g., exercise, work, family, and social relationships). The goal of treating drug addiction is not only to decrease drug-maintained behaviors but also to promote a reallocation of behavior towards alternative, nondrug reinforcers. Experimental procedures that offer concurrent access to both a drug reinforcer and an alternative, nondrug reinforcer provide a research tool for assessment of medication effects on drug choice and behavioral allocation. Choice procedures are currently the standard in human laboratory research on medications development. Preclinical choice procedures have been utilized in biomedical research since the early 1940s, and during the last 10–15 years, their use for evaluation of medications to treat drug addiction has increased. We propose here that parallel use of choice procedures in preclinical and clinical studies will facilitate translational research on development of medications to treat cocaine addiction. In support of this proposition, a review of the literature suggests strong concordance between preclinical effectiveness of candidate medications to modify cocaine choice in nonhuman primates and rodents and clinical effectiveness of these medications to modify either cocaine choice in human laboratory studies or metrics of cocaine abuse in patients with cocaine use disorder. The strongest evidence for medication effectiveness in preclinical choice studies has been obtained with maintenance on the monoamine releaser d -amphetamine, a candidate agonist medication for cocaine use analogous to use of methadone to treat opioid abuse or nicotine formulations to treat tobacco dependence.