Growing a New Antidepressant

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Growing a New Antidepressant Nine years ago, Rusty Gage shattered a neuroscience dogma when he showed human brains give birth to new neurons. Today, a company is eager to take those findings to the clinic. By Kerry Grens http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=174710

One day in mid-January 2006 Todd Carter, the director of biology at BrainCells, Inc., was sitting in front of a computer screen counting blue neurons with green snaking processes. An automated neuron counter had given him some promising results, and he was going back to check the raw data. These neurons started off as a sheet of human neural stem cells, and when Carter applied a compound to them they proliferated and developed into neurons. When he did the experiment again he received the same results: neurogenesis. As he counted the number of neurons, glia, and stem cells, the data matched - this compound was making new neurons at rates as good as antidepressants. It was just what he was looking for. In searching for a potential new drug that would stimulate neurogenesis similar to the way Prozac and other drugs act on animal brains, BrainCells had screened 539 compounds on countless neural stem cells before coming across this one. The compound, now called BCI540, seemed to promote neurons with reasonable potency and was not toxic to cells. When Carter blocked the compound from acting, neurogenesis vanished. "Based on the antidepressants that have been run, we knew what we were looking for as to what would be a good antidepressant," he says. Carter decided to probe the drug's mechanism, and on January 27, 2006, the data came back; the drug was unique, not acting on any of the same neurotransmitters that antidepressant drugs do. BrainCells' scientists gathered to review this latest bit of BCI540's data. Carter was thrilled by the compound's unique action. "It was really exciting to know this was real, and unique. [i said,] 'Let's get it in vivo'." He turned to his colleague Andrew Morse, the company's director of pharmacology, and said, "I think I know what you'll be working on for the next month." http://www.thescientist.com/article/home/52980/