Researcher impressed by new depression medication

Jeffery Talbot, the director of the Research Center on Substance Abuse and Depression at Roseman University of Health Sciences in Henderson, is convinced that far too many suicides occur because currently available antidepressants take much too long to take effect, if they work at all.

So for years now the pharmacologist has spent day after day in his lab trying to develop a medication that is fast-acting, one that can provide a mood lift within 24 hours and then keep working. That research has led to an experimental drug that, at least in mice, causes a rapid antidepressant effect and also works long term.

Today a research study by Talbot and collaborators from Duquesne University and the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse will be showcased in San Diego at Experimental Biology 2014, an annual meeting of more than 14,000 scientists who share scientific concepts and research findings that often shape clinical advances.

What makes this study unique and exciting,” Talbot said in a phone call Tuesday from San Diego, “is that in the same drug we seem to have both of the properties you want in antidepressant — both rapid and sustained effects. So many antidepressants today take three weeks or more to work.”

The drug, which he’s code-named MI-4, works simultaneously by increasing the levels of three key chemicals in the brain that are known to affect mood and feelings of pleasure — dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin.

Most depression drugs, he said, only target one of the three chemicals, which may explain why they generally are not effective in all patients. Given the properties of this drug, Talbot said, it appears that many more people could benefit from it.

If the drug works on people as it does on animals, Talbot said, an individual could escape a serious crisis spawned by depression and then move forward on an even keel.

Talbot said the drug is not new but one that had been put on the shelf after it did not work as planned to change the effects of cocaine in the brain.

It was through a protocol known as “virtual screening,” where computer modeling is used to find drugs that are likely to interact with particular receptors in the brain, that Talbot said he and the team eventually learned of the drug’s potential.

After the virtual screening, the researchers tested MI-4’s effects in cell cultures and then in mice. Coupled with new evidence of the drug’s antidepressant properties was more good news: The study would show that MI-4 was unlikely to become addictive.

While Talbot says he and his team “are incredibly excited by their findings,” he cautioned against expecting such a drug to be available soon.

“Research is incremental,” he said. “It could be years. Other scientists may build on what we’ve found just as we built on the work of others.”

But Talbot says his team’s research findings give him an even greater sense of urgency whenever he goes to the lab to work on experiments.

“Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses in the world, affecting about 20 million people in the United States alone,” he said.

“The third-leading causes of death among adolescents in the Western World is suicide. What we have to help people now isn’t good enough. We need something new.”

Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.