The NPS system plays a role in the regulation of several addiction-related mechanisms, in particular withdrawal (Ruggeri et al., 2010) and relapse to drug seeking (Cannella et al., 2009a; Kallupi et al., 2010; Paneda et al., 2009). Together, these data indicate that the NPS/NPSR system may represent a therapeutic target in addiction. Of particular interest is the possibility that NPSR antagonists may be useful in the treatment of drug craving and relapse. Non-peptide NPSR antagonists that can be used as tools to probe the biology of the NPS system have been developed (Okamura et al., 2008; Patnaik et al., 2010), but none of these have properties that would render them suitable for clinical development at present state.
