Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Tetracyclic antidepressant
Summary
Tetracyclic antidepressants (TeCAs) are a class of antidepressants that were first introduced in the 1970s. They are named after their tetracyclic chemical structure, containing four rings of atoms, and are closely related to the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), which contain three rings of atoms.
Maprotiline (Ludiomil) – can also be classified as a TCA and grouped with the secondary amines
Mianserin (Tolvon)
Mirtazapine (Remeron)
Setiptiline (Tecipul)
Drugs that contain four rings not all fused together but are sometimes still classified as TeCAs include:
Amoxapine (Asendin) – often classified as a TCA and grouped with the secondary amines
Quetiapine (Seroquel) - an atypical antipsychotic sometimes used as an adjunct antidepressant
Benzoctamine (Tacitin) – a tetracyclic compound and is closely related to maprotiline, with the two compounds differing only in the length of their side chain, but benzoctamine is not used as an antidepressant and is instead used as an anxiolytic
Loxapine (Adasuve, Loxitane) – a typical antipsychotic that produces amoxapine as a major metabolite and is said to have antidepressant effects, but it is not usually regarded as a TeCA
Drugs that contain four rings not all fused together but could still be classified as tetracyclic include:
Mazindol (Mazanor, Sanorex) – a monoamine reuptake inhibitor used as an appetite suppressant and with potential antidepressant effects, but not classified as a TeCA
Aptazapine (CGS-7525A) – a close analogue of mirtazapine
Esmirtazapine (ORG-50,081) – the (S)-(+) enantiomer of mirtazapine
Oxaprotiline (C 49-802 BDA) – a close analogue of maprotiline
Drugs that contain four rings not all fused together but could still be classified as tetracyclic include:
Ciclazindol (WY-23,409) – a close analogue of mazindol
Pharmacology of antidepressants
TeCAs have diverse pharmacology and differ from TCAs in a number of ways. With the exception of amoxapine, TeCAs do not inhibit the reuptake of serotonin. However, aside from mirtazapine, they do inhibit the reuptake of norepinephrine.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.