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Modeling Of Pharmacokinetics Of Cocaine In Human Reveals The Feasibility For Development Of Enzyme Therapies For Drugs Of Abuse, Fang Zheng, Chang-Guo Zhan

Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

A promising strategy for drug abuse treatment is to accelerate the drug metabolism by administration of a drug-metabolizing enzyme. The question is how effectively an enzyme can actually prevent the drug from entering brain and producing physiological effects. In the present study, we have developed a pharmacokinetic model through a combined use of in vitro kinetic parameters and positron emission tomography data in human to examine the effects of a cocaine-metabolizing enzyme in plasma on the time course of cocaine in plasma and brain of human. Without an exogenous enzyme, cocaine half-lives in both brain and plasma are almost linearly …