JRT a new Lysergamide in the Horizon?
Two weeks ago, we celebrated the discovery of the effects of LSD by Albert Hofmann in 1943, a day known by many as Bicycle Day. However, there might be a new big name in town regarding the clinical and therapeutic use of Lysergamides.
JRT (and I promise you, this is not a new car model)
We all love and know the effects of LSD on the human brain. We have known the effects of LSD for 81 years, and it’s safe to say that LSD influenced a whole generation, starting with counterculture personalities such as Timothy Leary but also the hippie and counterculture community of the 60s. When we picture LSD, we typically picture crazy visuals, hallucinations, a change in how we perceive sound and color, how the world functions, and how we function as a living human being with ideologies, beliefs, and a whole personality. It’s common to meet people who say LSD changed my life, and I’m proud of becoming who I’ve become because of it.
Even if we love the effects of these compounds and have grown to love what they can bring to our lives and unveil the mind, we must be honest, saying that this blotter paper or droplet may cause you to have hallucinations and change your whole entity as a human being doesn’t seem like a good selling point from a therapeutic viewpoint. Additionally, we cannot look only at this one side of the coin and note that many people say that LSD was the worst experience they had in their whole life and that they’ve developed mental states such as schizophrenia or had an extremely unpleasant experience that they are to overcome until today.
Hearing these experiences and knowing that you will hallucinate can be a scary sight, especially to those who have always been told: “Psychedelics are BAD. They will fry your brains!” and have witnessed the hundreds of media articles saying how these compounds have damaged the lives of people. But one thing is undeniable. Data has shown that LSD can improve cognition and mood, reduce pain, increase neuronal growth, and show potential for treating depression and anxiety.
Researchers thought, what if we could change the structure of LSD to a way we can maintain the therapeutic effects of the compound but reduce the hallucinations that people are scared to deal with?
And so they did.
By altering the position of two atoms in the molecular structure of LSD, a team at UC Davis created the new compound named JRT and published the discovery on April 14th, 5 days before Bicycle Day.
The subtle change preserved the ability of the drug to stimulate brain cell growth and repair damaged neural connections, key features in treating cognitive decline while minimizing the psychedelic effects.
“By just transposing two atoms in LSD, we significantly improved JRT’s selectivity profile and reduced its hallucinogenic potential.”
-David E. Olson, director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics and professor of chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular medicine at UC Davis.
Promising pre-trials?
When given to mice, JRT has powerful neuroplastic effects and improved measures of the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia without showing behaviors and gene expression associated with psychosis. States of psychosis are one of the main issues when it comes to giving psychedelics to people who have a family history of schizophrenia.
“The development of JRT emphasizes that we can use psychedelics like LSD as starting points to make better medicines. We may be able to create medications that can be used in patient populations where psychedelic use is precluded.” – David Olson
We need your help
We are currently working on our second book, Entheogenic Synergy. To do so, we need your help. By sharing your psychedelic experience, you will be helping us immensely with our study to prove the theory that external factors before the psychedelic experience can impact the way we trip. You can share your psychedelic experience by accessing our form.
Synthesizing and Naming the molecule:
The team worked on the 12-step synthesis for almost five years. JTR was named after Jeremy R. Tuck, a former student in Olson’s lab, who was the first to synthesize it. He is also a co-first author of the study alongside Lee E. Dunlap.
Getting to the nerdy details:
- JRT and LSD have the same molecular weight and overall shape but have different pharmacological properties.
- JRT is very potent and highly selective for binding to 5-HT2A serotonin receptors (which are the key to promoting cortical neuron growth.)
- JRT promoted neuroplasticity, or growth between cellular connections in the brain, leading to a 46% increase in dendritic spine density and an 18% increase in synapse density in the prefrontal cortex.
- JRT didn’t produce hallucinogenic-like effects contrary to LSD
- JRT didn’t promote gene expression associated with schizophrenia. (This gene expression typically is amplified with LSD use.)
- JRT produced an anti-depressant effect around 100-fold more potent than ketamine.
- JRT promoted cognitive flexibility, successfully addressing deficits in reversal learning that are associated with schizophrenia.
“JRT has extremely high therapeutic potential. Right now, we are testing it in other disease models, improving its synthesis, and creating new analogs of JRT that might be even better.”
-David Olson
Aims of the future of JRT:
Olson believes that JRT has the potential to treat the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, considering most of the current treatments produce limited effects on anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure and cognitive function. Clozapine is one exception, but it still has side effects and isn’t the first-line drug of choice for people severely afflicted with schizophrenia.) The team is also working to test the potential of JRT against other neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases.
You can stay up to date with Olson’s Lab research here: