Study: Prazosin inhibits endocytic sorting

In a study just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Ulrike Eggert et al. demonstrated that the drug Prazosin inhibits endocytic sorting.

They implicate the G protein-coupled dopamine receptor D3 and the membrane transport complex coatomer COPI in this process, proposing  a new biological role for G protein coupled receptors.

This work shows an interesting off-target effect of Prazosin, used in the clinic as an antagonist of α1-adrenic receptors (a sub-family of G protein-coupled receptors), providing a useful tool for the further study of endosome dynamics.