Henry I. Yamamura
Regents’ Professor of Pharmacology
Ph.D., University of Washington, 1969
College of Medicine 5122
(520) 626-7381
hiy@email.arizona.edu
Research Interests
Opioid receptors (delta, mu and kappa) are all involved in the production of analgesia. Dr. Yamamura has played an important role in the development of drugs that act at the delta opioid receptors. Delta opioid drugs should relieve pain and produce minimal side effects as respiratory depression, tolerance and dependence. Dr. Yamamura has cloned the human delta opioid receptors to study the mechanism of opioid tolerance and dependence.
Selected Publications
Okura T, Varga EV, Hosohata Y, Navratilova ED, Cowell SM, Rice K, Nagase H, Hruby VJ, Roeske WR, Yamamura HI (2003) Agonist-specific down-regulation of the human opioid receptor. Eur J Pharmacol 459:9-16.
Hosohata K, Varga EV, Alfaro-Lopez J, Tang X, Vanderah TW, Porreca F, Hruby VJ, Roeske WR, Yamamura HI (2003) (2S,3R)__-Methyl-2',6'-dimethyltyrosine-L-tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-carboxylic acid [(2S,3R)TMT-L-Tic-OH] is a potent selective-opioid receptor agonist in mouse brain. J Pharmacol Exp Thera 304:683-688.
Varga EV, Rubenzik M, Grife V, Sugiyama M, Stropova D, Roeske WR, Yamamura HI (2002) Involvement of Raf-1 in chronic delta-opioid receptor agonist-mediated adenylyl cyclase superactivation. Eur J Pharmacol 451:101-102.
Rubenzik M, Varga E, Stropova D, Roeske WR, Yamamura HI (2001) Expression of _-transducin in Chinese hamster ovary cells stably transfected with the human _-opioid receptor attenuates chronic opioid agonist-induced adenylyl cyclase superactivation. Mol Pharmacol 60:1076-1082.