Hai-Ying Zhang

H.-Y., T.Salman, G.-H.Bi, et al. 2026. “Cocaine-Induced Immediate-Early Gene Expression in the Nucleus Accumbens: Roles of Separate cAMP Sensors.” Journal of Neurochemistry170, no. 4: e70374. Zhang, https://doi.org/10.1111/jnc.70374. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data Availability Statement A preprint of this article was posted on April 20, 2025 in bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.15.648980v1).

Abstract Opioid use disorder (OUD) remains a major public health crisis, underscoring the urgent need for safer and more effective treatments. Cannabinoid CB2 receptor (CB2R) agonists show therapeutic promise for neuropsychiatric disorders and pain, with minimal psychoactive effects by themselves, but their potential in treating OUD is not well defined.

Neuropeptides may exert trophic effects during development, and then neurotransmitter roles in the developed nervous system. One way to associate peptide-deficiency phenotypes with either role is first to assess potential phenotypes in so-called constitutive knockout mice, and then proceed to specify, regionally and temporally, where and when neuropeptide expression is required to prevent these phenotypes.