Interest in the effectiveness of psychedelic drugs as treatments for disorders such as substance use disorder, PTSD and depression has grown in the last few years. Thus far, different studies have determined that psychedelic compounds, such as psilocybin, DMT and LSD, promote the strengthening and growth of neurons and their connections in the prefrontal cortex. This region in the brain plays a role in executive function, including reasoning and decision making.
Now, scientists at UC Davis have invented a tool that can track how psychedelic substances activate biomolecules and neurons in the brain. The rapid noninvasive tool, dubbed Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID (CaST), was tested in mice models.
This study affords scientists a new method that can be used to track molecular signaling processes, which induce these neuroplastic effects, albeit gradually. According to the scientists, the protein-based tool achieves this cellular tagging task quickly, taking between 10 and 30 minutes. This is significantly faster than other tagging techniques, which take a couple of hours to produce results.
The study was carried out in collaboration with associate professor David Olson of chemistry, biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis. He is also the founding director of the college’s Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.
For their study, the researchers administered psilocybin to mice models then used biotin in conjunction with CaST to pick out neurons in the prefrontal cortex that had high levels of calcium. CaST focuses on changes in concentrations of intracellular calcium to track activity in the neurons. When the neurons are highly active, they have high levels of calcium. The tool uses this signal to mark the cell with biotin.
Christina Kim, an assistant professor of neurology at the institution’s Center for Neuroscience and School of Medicine, explained that the use of biotin as a tagging substrate was good. This, she added, was because different commercial tools could be used to determine whether biotin was absent or not by a simple imaging and staining technique.
The scientists are now focused on developing techniques that will allow for brain-wide cellular labeling using the CaST tool. Additionally, they are looking for new ways to enhance the individual protein signatures produced by neurons and affected by psychedelics.
The study’s findings were published in “Nature Methods.”
Other authors of the study include lead authors Maribel Anguiano and Run Zhang, along with Sruti S. Vadde, Joshua Chandra, Sophia Lin and Isak K. Aarrestad.
The study was supported by grants from the Boone Family Foundation, NSF, NIH, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, Kinship Foundation, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
Innovations such as this noninvasive tool to see how neurons are affected by psychedelics could possibly one day find its way into the different activities that companies such as Mind Medicine Inc. (NASDAQ: MNMD) (NEO: MMED) (DE: MMQ) are engaged in with the aim of commercializing new treatments derived from psychedelic compounds.
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