Research progress of PDE4 in the central nervous system / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Phosphodiesterase-4 ( PDE4 ) has been one of the most popular drug targets during recent years due to its critical role in the control of intracellular cyclic adenosine monophos-phate ( cAMP ) concentration and downstream signal transduc-tion. PDE4 is widely distributed in the central nervous system ( CNS) with different expression levels of its four subtypes. Re-cent data indicate that altered PDE4 expression and/or activity is relevant to multiple CNS disorders, such as depression, memory deficiency, drug dependence, and neural lesion. Selective PDE4 inhibitors exhibit therapeutic effects on these disorders and might be a promising pharmacotherapy. The paper highlights recent re-search progress in the roles of PDE4 in CNS function, and dis-cusses the prospects of PDE4 as a novel therapeutic target for CNS disorders.