ABSTRACT
As more (patho)physiological processes that are mediated by histamine (e.g., stomach acid secretion and neurotransmitter release) were studied, it became apparent that the action of histamine is mediated by four distinct receptor subtypes. The rst three histamine receptor subtypes were discovered by classical pharmacological means, i.e., using subtype selective ligands that were developed by medicinal chemists. The histamine H4 receptor was discovered using the human genome, nicely illustrating the impact of molecular biology and genomics in drug discovery.
