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Trunnell ER, Baines J, Farghali S, Jackson T, Jayne K, Smith R, Stibbe T. The need for guidance in antidepressant drug development: Revisiting the role of the forced swim test and tail suspension test. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol 2024; 151:105666. [PMID: 38942190 DOI: 10.1016/j.yrtph.2024.105666] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2024] [Revised: 05/21/2024] [Accepted: 06/24/2024] [Indexed: 06/30/2024]
Abstract
Depressive disorders are one of the most common mental disorders globally and progress in treating these disorders has been hampered, in part, by a lack of suitable nonclinical efficacy tests. Two common tests used in nonclinical efficacy studies of antidepressants-the forced swim test (FST) and tail suspension test (TST)-have come under criticism in recent years for their inconsistency and lack of validity, yet they continue to be used in the pharmaceutical industry. In this review, we provide a rationale for why international pharmaceutical regulatory and guidance agencies should begin issuing direction on methods for non-clinical efficacy testing that traditionally use the FST and TST, particularly considering that some regulators, such as those in the U.S. and E.U., allow the authorization of clinical trials to proceed without requiring tests in animals. The area of antidepressant drug discovery represents an important opportunity for reducing the attrition of psychiatric drugs, harmonizing regulatory requirements, and reducing animal use. Specific recommendations for the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) have been provided.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily R Trunnell
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) U.S., 1536 16th St. N.W., Washington, DC, 20036, USA.
| | - Julia Baines
- PETA U.K., Society Building, 8 All Saints Street, London, N1 9RL, UK
| | - Stephen Farghali
- Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 5100 Wisconsin Ave # 400, Washington, DC, 20016, USA.
| | - Tara Jackson
- New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society, PO BOX 9387, Tower Junction, Christchurch, 8149, New Zealand.
| | - Kimberley Jayne
- PETA U.K., Society Building, 8 All Saints Street, London, N1 9RL, UK.
| | - Rachel Smith
- Animal-Free Science Advocacy, PO Box 15, Fitzroy Vic, 3065, Australia.
| | - Tina Stibbe
- PETA Deutschland e.V., Friolzheimer Strasse 3, 70499, Stuttgart, Germany.
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2
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Hudock A, Leal ZP, Sharma A, Mei A, Santos R, Marchetto MC. Exploring mood disorders and treatment options using human stem cells. Genet Mol Biol 2024; 47Suppl 1:e20230305. [PMID: 38954533 PMCID: PMC11223183 DOI: 10.1590/1678-4685-gmb-2023-0305] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2023] [Accepted: 04/16/2024] [Indexed: 07/04/2024] Open
Abstract
Despite their global prevalence, the mechanisms for mood disorders like bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder remain largely misunderstood. Mood stabilizers and antidepressants, although useful and effective for some, do not have a high responsiveness rate across those with these conditions. One reason for low responsiveness to these drugs is patient heterogeneity, meaning there is diversity in patient characteristics relating to genetics, etiology, and environment affecting treatment. In the past two decades, novel induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research and technology have enabled the use of human-derived brain cells as a new model to study human disease that can help account for patient variance. Human iPSC technology is an emerging tool to better understand the molecular mechanisms of these disorders as well as a platform to test novel treatments and existing pharmaceuticals. This literature review describes the use of iPSC technology to model bipolar and major depressive disorder, common medications used to treat these disorders, and novel patient-derived alternative treatment methods for non-responders stemming from past publications, as well as presenting new data derived from these models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Autumn Hudock
- University of California San Diego, Department of Anthropology, La
Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Zaira Paulina Leal
- University of California San Diego, Department of Anthropology, La
Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Amandeep Sharma
- The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Laboratory of Genetics,
La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Arianna Mei
- The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Laboratory of Genetics,
La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Renata Santos
- The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Laboratory of Genetics,
La Jolla, CA, USA
- Université Paris Cité, Institute of Psychiatry and Neuroscience of
Paris (IPNP), INSERM U1266, Signaling Mechanisms in Neurological Disorders, Paris,
France
- Institut des Sciences Biologiques, Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France
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3
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Tripathi U, Rosh I, Ben Ezer R, Nayak R, Hussein Y, Choudhary A, Djamus J, Manole A, Houlden H, Gage FH, Stern S. Upregulated ECM genes and increased synaptic activity in Parkinson's human DA neurons with PINK1/ PRKN mutations. NPJ Parkinsons Dis 2024; 10:103. [PMID: 38762512 PMCID: PMC11102563 DOI: 10.1038/s41531-024-00715-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/08/2023] [Accepted: 04/25/2024] [Indexed: 05/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease. Primary symptoms of PD arise with the loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the Substantia Nigra Pars Compacta, but PD also affects the hippocampus and cortex, usually in its later stage. Approximately 15% of PD cases are familial with a genetic mutation. Two of the most associated genes with autosomal recessive (AR) early-onset familial PD are PINK1 and PRKN. In vitro studies of these genetic mutations are needed to understand the neurophysiological changes in patients' neurons that may contribute to neurodegeneration. In this work, we generated and differentiated DA and hippocampal neurons from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) derived from two patients with a double mutation in their PINK1 and PRKN (one homozygous and one heterozygous) genes and assessed their neurophysiology compared to two healthy controls. We showed that the synaptic activity of PD neurons generated from patients with the PINK1 and PRKN mutations is impaired in the hippocampus and dopaminergic neurons. Mutant dopaminergic neurons had enhanced excitatory post-synaptic activity. In addition, DA neurons with the homozygous mutation of PINK1 exhibited more pronounced electrophysiological differences compared to the control neurons. Signaling network analysis of RNA sequencing results revealed that Focal adhesion and ECM receptor pathway were the top two upregulated pathways in the mutant PD neurons. Our findings reveal that the phenotypes linked to PINK1 and PRKN mutations differ from those from other PD mutations, suggesting a unique interplay between these two mutations that drives different PD mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Utkarsh Tripathi
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Idan Rosh
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Ran Ben Ezer
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Ritu Nayak
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Yara Hussein
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Ashwani Choudhary
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Jose Djamus
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Andreea Manole
- Laboratory of Genetics, Gage, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Henry Houlden
- UCL queen square institute of neurology, University College London, London, England
| | - Fred H Gage
- Laboratory of Genetics, Gage, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Shani Stern
- Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
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Villanueva R. Advances in the knowledge and therapeutics of schizophrenia, major depression disorder, and bipolar disorder from human brain organoid research. Front Psychiatry 2023; 14:1178494. [PMID: 37502814 PMCID: PMC10368988 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1178494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2023] [Accepted: 06/28/2023] [Indexed: 07/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Tridimensional cultures of human induced pluripotent cells (iPSCs) experimentally directed to neural differentiation, termed "brain organoids" are now employed as an in vitro assay that recapitulates early developmental stages of nervous tissue differentiation. Technical progress in culture methodology enabled the generation of regionally specialized organoids with structural and neurochemical characters of distinct encephalic regions. The technical process of organoid elaboration is undergoing progressively implementation, but current robustness of the assay has attracted the attention of psychiatric research to substitute/complement animal experimentation for analyzing the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. Numerous morphological, structural, molecular and functional insights of psychiatric disorders have been uncovered by comparing brain organoids made with iPSCs obtained from control healthy subjects and psychiatric patients. Brain organoids were also employed for analyzing the response to conventional treatments, to search for new drugs, and to anticipate the therapeutic response of individual patients in a personalized manner. In this review, we gather data obtained by studying cerebral organoids made from iPSCs of patients of the three most frequent serious psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia, major depression disorder, and bipolar disorder. Among the data obtained in these studies, we emphasize: (i) that the origin of these pathologies takes place in the stages of embryonic development; (ii) the existence of shared molecular pathogenic aspects among patients of the three distinct disorders; (iii) the occurrence of molecular differences between patients bearing the same disorder, and (iv) that functional alterations can be activated or aggravated by environmental signals in patients bearing genetic risk for these disorders.
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Hicks EM, Seah C, Cote A, Marchese S, Brennand KJ, Nestler EJ, Girgenti MJ, Huckins LM. Integrating genetics and transcriptomics to study major depressive disorder: a conceptual framework, bioinformatic approaches, and recent findings. Transl Psychiatry 2023; 13:129. [PMID: 37076454 PMCID: PMC10115809 DOI: 10.1038/s41398-023-02412-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2022] [Revised: 03/17/2023] [Accepted: 03/24/2023] [Indexed: 04/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a complex and heterogeneous psychiatric syndrome with genetic and environmental influences. In addition to neuroanatomical and circuit-level disturbances, dysregulation of the brain transcriptome is a key phenotypic signature of MDD. Postmortem brain gene expression data are uniquely valuable resources for identifying this signature and key genomic drivers in human depression; however, the scarcity of brain tissue limits our capacity to observe the dynamic transcriptional landscape of MDD. It is therefore crucial to explore and integrate depression and stress transcriptomic data from numerous, complementary perspectives to construct a richer understanding of the pathophysiology of depression. In this review, we discuss multiple approaches for exploring the brain transcriptome reflecting dynamic stages of MDD: predisposition, onset, and illness. We next highlight bioinformatic approaches for hypothesis-free, genome-wide analyses of genomic and transcriptomic data and their integration. Last, we summarize the findings of recent genetic and transcriptomic studies within this conceptual framework.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily M Hicks
- Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Departments of Psychiatry and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
- Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
| | - Carina Seah
- Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Departments of Psychiatry and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
- Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
| | - Alanna Cote
- Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Departments of Psychiatry and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
| | - Shelby Marchese
- Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Departments of Psychiatry and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
| | - Kristen J Brennand
- Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Departments of Psychiatry and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
- Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
- Department of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA
| | - Eric J Nestler
- Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA
| | - Matthew J Girgenti
- Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA.
| | - Laura M Huckins
- Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Departments of Psychiatry and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, 10029, USA.
- Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA.
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Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology: Toward the Future of Personalized Psychiatry. J Pers Med 2022; 12:jpm12081340. [PMID: 36013289 PMCID: PMC9410334 DOI: 10.3390/jpm12081340] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/13/2022] [Revised: 08/15/2022] [Accepted: 08/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
The polygenic and multifactorial nature of many psychiatric disorders has hampered implementation of the personalized medicine approach in clinical practice. However, induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has emerged as an innovative tool for patient-specific disease modeling to expand the pathophysiology knowledge and treatment perspectives in the last decade. Current technologies enable adult human somatic cell reprogramming into iPSCs to generate neural cells and direct neural cell conversion to model organisms that exhibit phenotypes close to human diseases, thereby effectively representing relevant aspects of neuropsychiatric disorders. In this regard, iPSCs reflect patient pathophysiology and pharmacological responsiveness, particularly when cultured under conditions that emulate spatial tissue organization in brain organoids. Recently, the application of iPSCs has been frequently associated with gene editing that targets the disease-causing gene to deepen the illness pathophysiology and to conduct drug screening. Moreover, gene editing has provided a unique opportunity to repair the putative causative genetic lesions in patient-derived cells. Here, we review the use of iPSC technology to model and potentially treat neuropsychiatric disorders by illustrating the key studies on a series of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. Future perspectives will involve the development of organ-on-a-chip platforms that control the microenvironmental conditions so as to reflect individual pathophysiological by adjusting physiochemical parameters according to personal health data. This strategy could open new ways by which to build a disease model that considers individual variability and tailors personalized treatments.
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Albeldas C, Cohen N, Natan S, Askari N, Laifenfeld D, Solal TC. Genetika+: precision medicine solutions for mental health. Pharmacogenomics 2022; 23:571-574. [PMID: 35880563 DOI: 10.2217/pgs-2022-0053] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Genetika+ is developing a precision medicine tool to optimize the treatment of depression by helping physicians find the best drug therapy for their patients. The tool builds on traditional pharmacogenetics, introducing a 'brain-in-a-dish' screening platform for each patient that will overcome the challenge of limited pharmacodynamic knowledge of pharmacogenetics (PGx). In addition to PGx, our platform integrates patient data with innovative blood-derived patient neurons to test all categories of antidepressants and predict the best drug for each patient. This offers patients optimal drug treatment, allowing a faster response, fewer side effects and lower dosing.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Niv Cohen
- GenetikaPlus Ltd, 126 Yigal Alon, Tel Aviv, 6744332, Israel
| | - Sari Natan
- GenetikaPlus Ltd, 126 Yigal Alon, Tel Aviv, 6744332, Israel
| | - Nadav Askari
- GenetikaPlus Ltd, 126 Yigal Alon, Tel Aviv, 6744332, Israel
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