Dear Colleagues,

The endocannabinoid system is widely expressed throughout the body and regulates many important physiological and pathophysiological processes. Cannabinoid receptors (CBRs) are G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and, ligands modulating activity of these receptors are structurally diverse. CBR activation results in both therapeutic, and unfortunately adverse, effects, which currently limits the clinical use of drugs in this class. However, mechanisms controlling cannabinoid receptor activation and subsequent intracellular signaling processes are highly complex and thus might be exploited to overcome these limitations to preferentially activate pathways responsible for therapeutic rather than adverse effects. For example, ligand-specific modulation of CBRs can result in distinct intracellular signaling patterns via a number of mechanisms including functional selectivity, biased signaling and allosteric modulation. CBR signaling specificity can also be achieved by tissue-selective receptor expression and activity of ligands at non-canonical CBRs. Therefore, articles for this Special Issue are sought to provide improved knowledge to help harness these and other mechanisms of producing CBR signaling diversity and to lead to the development of cannabinoid-based drugs with enhanced therapeutic activity and reduced toxicity.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Orthosteric and allosteric CBR signaling;
2. CBR functional selectivity and bias signaling;
3. CBR-interacting proteins;
4. Signaling of non-canonical CBRs;
5. CBR-signaling networks;
6. Tissue-specific CBR signaling;
7. CBR signaling in cancer cells;
8. Molecular modeling of CBR ligands;
9. CBR structure and function.

Prof. Dr. Paul L. Prather
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs)
• endocannabinoids
• functional selectivity
• bias signaling
• molecular modeling
• synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists
• CB1 receptors
• CB2 receptors