Intranasal application of vasopressin fails to elicit changes in brain immediate early gene expression, neural activity and behavioral performance of rats

Intranasal administration has been widely used to investigate effects of the neuropeptides vasopressin and oxytocin on human behaviors and neurological disorders, but exactly what happens when these neuropeptides are administered intranasally is far from clear. In particular, it is not clear whether a physiological significant amount of peptide enters the brain to account for the observed effects. Here, we investigated whether intranasal administration of vasopressin and oxytocin to rats induces expression of the immediate-early gene product Fos in brain areas that are sensitive to centrally administered peptide, whether it alters neuronal activity in the way that centrally administered peptide does, and whether it affects behavior in ways expected from studies of centrally administered peptide. We found that, whereas intracerebroventricular (icv) injection of very low doses of vasopressin or oxytocin increased Fos expression in several distinct brain regions, intranasal administration of large doses of the peptides had no significant effect. In contrast to the effects of vasopressin applied topically to the main olfactory bulb, we saw no changes in the electrical activity of olfactory bulb mitral cells after intranasal vasopressin administration. In addition, vasopressin given intranasally had no significant effects on social recognition or short-term recognition memory. Finally, intranasal infusions of vasopressin had no significant effects on the parameters monitored on the elevated plus maze, a rodent model of anxiety. Our data in rats suggest that, after intranasal administration, significant amounts of vasopressin and oxytocin do not reach areas in the brain at levels sufficient to change immediate early gene expression, neural activity or behavior in the ways described for central administration of the peptides

Selenoether oxytocin analogues have analgesic properties in a mouse model of chronic abdominal pain

Poor oral availability and susceptibility to reduction and protease degradation is a major hurdle in peptide drug development. However, drugable receptors in the gut present an attractive niche for peptide therapeutics. Here we demonstrate, in a mouse model of chronic abdominal pain, that oxytocin receptors are significantly upregulated in nociceptors innervating the colon. Correspondingly, we develop chemical strategies to engineer non-reducible and therefore more stable oxytocin analogues. Chemoselective selenide macrocyclization yields stabilized analogues equipotent to native oxytocin. Ultra-high-field nuclear magnetic resonance structural analysis of native oxytocin and the seleno-oxytocin derivatives reveals that oxytocin has a pre-organized structure in solution, in marked contrast to earlier X-ray crystallography studies. Finally, we show that these seleno-oxytocin analogues potently inhibit colonic nociceptors both in vitro and in vivo in mice with chronic visceral hypersensitivity. Our findings have potentially important implications for clinical use of oxytocin analogues and disulphide-rich peptides in general