Profile of genes showing increased expression following dopamine and methamphetamine exposure in an immortalized neuronal cell line

Abstract

Meffimphetamine (METH) is a drug of abuse with well-deseribed neurodegenerative effects. Some of the METH-induced degenerative manifestations are thought to be due to increased dopamine (DA) release in the cytoplasm of nerve terminals and subsequent extravasation in the synaptic cleft. Using an immortalized neural cell line, we have made use of the comprehensive cDNA array technology in order to compare and contrast the molecular effects of DA and METH. We found that the two compounds do have many similar but also different effects. Since these neural cells produce no DA, these results demonstrate that many of the METH-induced responses attributed to DA might, in fact, be intrinsic to METH itself. More biochmical studies are needed to investigate DA-independent METH deleterious events in the central nervous system.