Gavril Pasternak of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and co-workers examined the pharmacological progress of drugs, such as opioids, when injected into the brain. They report in 1 March Nature Neuroscience, that the drugs are pumped out of the brain into the systemic circulation by the multi-drug resistance transporter Mdr1a (also known as P-glycoprotein 1), a protein that is also implicated in the resistance of tumour cells to chemotherapy.
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In an accompanying News & Views article, Robert Edwards of the UCSF School of...