Editorial: Targeting the endocannabinoidome in neurodegenerative disorders

Current studies have unveiled the important roles of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) in multiple aspects of neural functions, including motor coordination, learning and memory, emotion and motivation, and psychiatric disorders such as mood disorders (de Melo Reis et al., 2021). ECS is composed of the two canonical receptor subtypes: type-1 cannabinoid (CB1R) and type 2 receptor (CB2R), as well as endocannabinoids (eCBs) and enzymes responsible for the synthesis and degradation of eCBs. Many studies have focused on each molecule of ECS using cannabinoid receptor ligands, such as CBD, to discover the role that ECS might play in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. CB2R in particular became known as a major regulator of the activity of microglia, which is upregulated under inflammatory conditions (Komorowska-Müller et al., 2021). ECS could potentially be involved in those disorders by regulating monoamine systems (Mendiguren et al., 2021; Peters and Naneix, 2022) and GABAergic and cholinergic neurons.