Fruit Flies & Cocaine: New Addiction Treatment Hope
Scientists are unlocking a novel approach to understanding and treating cocaine addiction: fruit flies. By silencing specific bitter-taste receptors,researchers have induced a cocaine preference in these tiny insects,mirroring human responses to the drug. This innovative research, detailed in the journal of Neuroscience, holds promise for advancing therapies for cocaine use disorder (CUD), a condition that claimed over 24,000 lives in the U.S.in 2021. Adrian Rothenfluh, PhD, emphasizes that the study of simple fly brains can give insights that cannot be anticipated, paving the way for designing effective interventions. News Directory 3 is keeping a close eye on these developments. Discover what’s next …
Fruit Flies, Cocaine, and Addiction Research
Table of Contents
Muting bitter-sensing taste receptors in fruit flies can lead to a cocaine preference, potentially unlocking insights into cocaine use disorder.
Fruit flies, or Drosophila, typically avoid cocaine because of its bitter taste.However, researchers have discovered that silencing the neurons responsible for sensing bitterness can cause the flies to develop a preference for the substance, according to a study in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The findings may advance the understanding of addiction and accelerate the progress of new therapies for cocaine use disorder (CUD), according to a press release.
In 2021,more than 24,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. involved cocaine. Currently, there are no FDA-approved pharmacotherapies for CUD. While CUD is highly heritable,the specific genetic and molecular mechanisms are not well understood.
Adrian Rothenfluh, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah’s Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, told Healio that manny genes have been linked to CUD in humans, but it is unknown if these gene variants cause changes in cocaine self-governance.
Because approximately 75% of human disease-related genes are present in Drosophila, the flies are a good model for studying addiction, the researchers said.
Rothenfluh and his team studied cocaine consumption in male Drosophila using a novel model of preferential cocaine self-administration. The 3- to 6-day-old flies were mildly deprived of food for six hours to encourage eating. They were then presented with two sugar water solutions, one supplemented with cocaine.
The researchers found that the flies reacted to cocaine similarly to humans. Flies that ingested 10 mM of cocaine displayed incapacitation and seizures, while 3 mM led to grooming behavior and loss of righting.
As cocaine dosage increased, food consumption decreased. Almost no flies consumed the sucrose solution containing the most cocaine (15 mM).
Drosophila have evolved to avoid plant toxins, including alkaloids, and perceive most alkaloids as bitter. Cocaine is an alkaloid phytotoxin,leading the researchers to believe the flies avoided cocaine due to their sense of taste.
Rothenfluh said that cocaine at higher concentrations is toxic to flies, as it is to humans, and evolution has selected for flies that know how to avoid it.
Cocaine strongly activates Gr66a-positive neurons in the flies’ tarsal segments, contributing to the detection of cocaine as bitter and discouraging consumption.
After these neurons were electrically silenced, the flies displayed considerably reduced cocaine avoidance and began to prefer cocaine-laced water over sugar water within 16 hours of initial exposure, according to the press release.
Rothenfluh said that understanding the simple fly brain can give insights that cannot be anticipated.
Rothenfluh told Healio that understanding the genes and molecular mechanisms involved in cocaine self-administration greatly increases the ability to rationally design a therapeutic intervention to counteract cocaine’s effects and improve addicts’ cravings.
reference:
Fruit flies on cocaine could reveal better therapies for addiction. Published jun. 2, 2025.Accessed Jun. 11, 2025.
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Adrian Rothenfluh, PhD, can be reached at adrian.rothenfluh@hsc.utah.edu.
Disclosures
Rothenfluh reports no relevant financial disclosures.The study was supported by the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, the University of Utah Molecular Medicine Program and NIH.