摘要：

Several issues regarding receptor nomenclature and classification were hotly debated at the Purines '92 meeting; at that time, there was a lack of information about the structure of the receptors involved (Abbracchio et al., 1993). The discussions in the open meeting in 1992 were very important guidelines for the first official report of the subcommittee on purinoceptors set up by the IUPHAR Committee on Receptor Nomenclature and Classification (Fredholm et al., 1994). It was decided to follow the early seminal proposal of Burnstock (1978) to divide the receptors into two major classes: adenosine (P1) receptors and P2‐purinoceptors. The latter were originally divided into P2X and P2Y subtypes on the basis of their pharmacological properties (Burnstock and Kennedy, 1985) and, later, P2T, P2Z, and P2U subtypes were also recognized. The evidence that ATP worked through two different transduction mechanisms: intrinsic ion channels and G protein‐coupled receptors was summarized by Dubyak (1991). This information, coupled with the cloning of purinoceptors in 1993/1995, led by Abbracchio and Burnstock (1994) to propose that purinoceptors be classified into two familes: G protein‐coupled receptors termed P2Y‐purinoceptors and intrinsic ion channel receptors termed P2X‐purinoceptors. The IUPHAR Nomenclature Subcommittee that met in 1994 tentatively supported this proposal (Fredholm et al., 1994). Developments in the past few years have borne out of these expectations and, at the Purines '96 meeting, the nomenclature subcommittee met and agreed on a revised nomenclature basically adopting the Abbracchio and Burnstock proposal. The new recommendations are outlined below. Drug Dev. Res. 39:461–466, 1996. 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

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