Introduction: A Short History of Adrenoceptor Research

This chapter provides a short history of adrenoceptor research starting from the initial discovery of adrenaline. It covers the evolving classification of adrenoceptor subtypes, the cloning of these subtypes from multiple species, and factors such as adrenoceptor regulation, inverse agonism and biased agonism. More details on many of these aspects are provided in other chapters of this volume of Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology.