Avenues for the Development of Therapeutics That Target Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1)

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) play an inordinately large role in human health. They are the targets of many clinically relevant medications and are also candidate therapeutic targets under current investigation for a wide spectrum of diseases. Drugs targeting GPCRs are used as antihypertensives, anti-allergenic/asthmatics, antipsychotics, and to treat numerous other disorders across a broad spectrum of diseases. One recent study focusing on the DrugBank database found that 19% of all human drug targets are GPCRs and ~36% of all drugs currently approved for market target GPCRs.1 Accordingly, GPCRs are by far the single largest protein family for drug targets; currently, 63 of 200 drugs with the highest sales volume in the United States target GPCRs. Further, this overrepresentation of GPCRs has been steady since the early 1980s and continues to this day.1,2