The vanilloid receptor VR1 has attracted great interest as a sensory transducer for capsaicin, protons, and heat, and as a therapeutic target. Here we characterize two novel VR1 antagonists, KJM429 [N-(4-tert-butylbenzyl)-NЈ-[4-(methylsulfonylamino)benzyl]thiourea] and JYL1421 [N-(4-tertbutylbenzyl)-NЈ-[3-fluoro-4-(methylsulfonylamino)benzyl]-thiourea], with enhanced activity compared with capsazepine on rat VR1 expressed in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. JYL1421, the more potent of the two novel antagonists, inhibited [ 3 H]resiniferatoxin binding to rVR1 with an affinity of 53.5 Ϯ 6.5 nM and antagonized capsaicininduced calcium uptake with an EC 50 of 9.2 Ϯ 1.6 nM, reflecting 25-and 60-fold greater potencies than capsazepine. Both JYL1421 and KJM429 antagonized RTX as well as capsaicin and their mechanism was competitive. The responses to JYL1421 and KJM429 differed for calcium uptake by rVR1 induced by heat or pH. JYL1421 antagonized the response to both pH 6.0 and 5.5, whereas KJM429 antagonized at pH 6.0 but was an agonist at lower pH (Ͻ5.5). For heat, JYL1421 fully antagonized and KJM429 partially antagonized. Capsazepine showed only weak antagonism for both pH and heat. Responses of rVR1 to different activators could thus be differentially affected by different ligands. In cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons, JYL1421 and KJM429 likewise behaved as antagonists for capsaicin, confirming that the antagonism is not limited to heterologous expression systems. Finally, JYL1421 and KJM429 had little or no effect on ATP-induced calcium uptake in CHO cells lacking rVR1, unlike capsazepine. We conclude that JYL1421 is a competitive antagonist of rVR1, blocking response to all three of the agonists (capsaicin, heat, and protons) with enhanced potency relative to capsazepine.A vanilloid receptor (VR1) that is activated by capsaicin, low pH, and temperatures higher than 42°C has been cloned from rat dorsal root ganglia (Caterina et al., 1997;Tominaga et al., 1998). It is a nonselective cation channel, with high permeability for divalent cations, expressed on unmyelinated pain-sensing nerve fibers (C-fibers) and small A␦ fibers in the dorsal root, trigeminal, and nodose ganglia. Initially, activation of VR1 by pungent agonists such as capsaicin leads to excitation of primary sensory neurons gating nociceptive inputs to the central nervous system. Subsequently, these fibers may become desensitized/defunctionalized, and this desensitization forms a basis for the therapeutic use of VR1 agonists . Potential therapeutic applications include detrusor hyperreflexia, postherpetic neuralgia, diabetic neuropathy, cluster headache, osteoarthritis, and pruritus (Rains and Bryson, 1995;Kim and Chancellor, 2000).The exciting potential therapeutic applications for vanilloids have motivated efforts to identify or design novel derivatives with improved properties (Walpole et al., 1993a,b,c;Wrigglesworth et al., 1996). An important advance was the identification of resiniferatoxin (RTX), a diterpene related to the phorbol...
