Current:Home > ContactThese LSD-based drugs seem to help mice with anxiety and depression — without the trip -FundWay
These LSD-based drugs seem to help mice with anxiety and depression — without the trip
View
Date:2025-04-16 20:13:34
Drugs like magic mushrooms and LSD can act as powerful and long-lasting antidepressants. But they also tend to produce mind-bending side-effects that limit their use.
Now, scientists report in the journal Nature that they have created drugs based on LSD that seem to relieve anxiety and depression – in mice – without inducing the usual hallucinations.
"We found our compounds had essentially the same antidepressant activity as psychedelic drugs," says Dr. Bryan Roth, an author of the study and a professor of pharmacology at UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine. But, he says, "they had no psychedelic drug-like actions at all."
The discovery could eventually lead to medications for depression and anxiety that work better, work faster, have fewer side effects, and last longer.
The success is just the latest involving tripless versions of psychedelic drugs. One previous effort created a hallucination-free variant of ibogaine, which is made from the root bark of a shrubby plant native to Central Africa known as the iboga tree.
"It's very encouraging to see multiple groups approach this problem in different ways and come up with very similar solutions," says David E. Olson, a chemical neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, who led the ibogaine project.
An unexpected find
The new drug comes from a large team of scientists who did not start out looking for an antidepressant.
They had been building a virtual library of 75 million molecules that include an unusual structure found in a number of drugs, including the psychedelics psilocybin and LSD, a migraine drug (ergotamine), and cancer drugs including vincristine.
The team decided to focus on molecules that affect the brain's serotonin system, which is involved in regulating a person's mood. But they still weren't looking for an antidepressant.
Roth recalls that during one meeting, someone asked, "What are we looking for here anyway? And I said, well, if nothing else, we'll have the world's greatest psychedelic drugs."
As their work progressed, though, the team realized that other researchers were showing that the psychedelic drug psilocybin could relieve depression in people. And the effects could last a year or more, perhaps because the drug was helping the brain rewire in a way that was less prone to depression.
"There [were] really interesting reports about people getting great results out of this after just a few doses," says Brian Shoichet, an author of the study and a professor in the pharmaceutical chemistry department at the University of California, San Francisco.
So the team began refining their search to find molecules in their library that might act the same way.
Ultimately, they selected two.
"They had the best properties," Shoichet says. "They were the most potent, and when you gave them to a mouse, they got into the brain at the highest concentrations."
The two molecules were also "extremely effective" at relieving symptoms of depression in mice, Roth says.
How to tell when a mouse is tripping
Scientists have shown that a depressed mouse tends to give up quickly when placed in an uncomfortable situation, like being dangled from its tail. But the same mouse will keep struggling if it gets an antidepressant drug like Prozac, ketamine, or psilocybin.
Mice also kept struggling when they got the experimental molecules.
But they didn't exhibit any signs of a psychedelic experience, which typically causes a mouse to twitch its nose in a distinctive way. "We were surprised to see that," Roth says.
The team says it needs to refine these new molecules before they can be tried in people. One reason is that they appear to mimic LSD's ability to increase heart rate and raise blood pressure.
But if the approach works, it could overcome a major obstacle to using psychedelic drugs to treat depression.
Currently, treatment with a psychedelic requires medical supervision and a therapist to guide a patient through their hallucinatory experience.
That's an impractical way to treat millions of people with depression, Shoichet says.
"Society would like a molecule that you can get prescribed and just take and you don't need a guided tour for your trip," he says.
Another advantage of the new approach is that the antidepressant effects would occur within hours of taking the drug, and might last a year or more. Drugs like Prozac and Zoloft often take weeks to work, and must be taken every day.
Drugs based on psychedelics "take us a step closer to a cure, rather than simply treating disease symptoms," Olsen says.
veryGood! (26)
Related
- Where will Elmo go? HBO moves away from 'Sesame Street'
- 'Zombie deer disease' cases are rising in the US. Can the disease spread to humans?
- The Excerpt podcast: The NIMBY war against green energy
- Katy Perry and Taylor Swift Shake Off Bad Blood Rumors Once and For All at Eras Tour in Sydney
- Spooky or not? Some Choa Chu Kang residents say community garden resembles cemetery
- The Quantitative Trading Journey of Dashiell Soren
- Senate calls on Pentagon watchdog to investigate handling of abuse allegations against Army doctor
- Why Meta, Amazon, and other 'Magnificent Seven' stocks rallied today
- 'No Good Deed': Who's the killer in the Netflix comedy? And will there be a Season 2?
- NBC replacing Jac Collinsworth as Notre Dame football play-by-play voice, per report
Ranking
- Bill Belichick's salary at North Carolina: School releases football coach's contract details
- Alexey Navalny's mother is shown his body, says Russian authorities are blackmailing her to have secret burial
- Love Is Blind Season 6 Reunion Date Revealed
- Who has the power to sue Brett Favre over welfare money? 1 Mississippi Republican sues another
- John Galliano out at Maison Margiela, capping year of fashion designer musical chairs
- Here's the Corny Gift Blake Shelton Sent The Voice's Season 25 Coaches
- Afrofuturist opera `Lalovavi’ to premiere in Cincinnati on Juneteenth 2025
- Fire traps residents in two high-rise buildings in Valencia, Spain, killing at least 4, officials say
Recommendation
Former Danish minister for Greenland discusses Trump's push to acquire island
EPA approves year-round sales of higher ethanol blend in 8 Midwest states
Trump sells sneakers and Beyoncé is a country star. Is this the quiz or 2024 bingo?
Phone companies want to eliminate traditional landlines. What's at stake and who loses?
'Kraven the Hunter' spoilers! Let's dig into that twisty ending, supervillain reveal
Pregnant teen found dead in a ditch days after she was to be induced
Herbstreit, Fowler to be voices in EA Sports college football game that will feature every FBS team
AP Week in Pictures: North America