Regulatory peptides and systems biology: A new era of translational and reverse-translational neuroendocrinology

Abstract

Recently, there has been a resurgence in regulatory peptide science as a result of three converging trends. The first is the increasing population of the drug pipeline with peptide-based therapeutics, mainly in, but not restricted to, incretin-like molecules for treatment of metabolic disorders such as diabetes. The second is the development of genetic and optogenetic tools enabling new insights into how peptides actually function within brain and peripheral circuits to accomplish homeostatic and allostatic regulation. The third is the explosion in defined structures of the G-protein coupled receptors to which most regulatory peptides bind and exert their actions. These trends have closely w..