Psychedelics are increasingly showing promise for their potential to treat a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders. Psychedelics rescue cortical atrophy by impacting neurotrophic factor gene expression, activating neuronal growth and survival mechanisms, and modulating the immune system.
Neuropsychiatric disorders share many common features with neurodegenerative disorders such as cortical atrophy, loss of synapses, and inflammation. Because of this, companies are beginning to explore psychedelics for neurodegeneration.
MD Biosciences offers a psychedelic drug screening assay to test a compounds influence on neurite and synapse growth and regeneration. The assay uses cortical neurons from immature rodents that are stained with beta tubulin 3.
Readouts:
- Neurite outgrowth
- Dendrite complexity (# branches)
- Intracellular BDNF staining for relative BDNF intensity
- Synaptic imaging (number of synapses and synaptic strength)
