Reuters North American News Service, November 5th, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A drug that boosts levels of
the brain's own "bliss" chemical can help reverse symptoms of
depression in rats, U.S. and Italian researchers reported
Monday.
The drug helps maintain high levels of a compound called
anandamide, named after the Sanskrit word for "bliss," which is
chemically similar to the active ingredient in marijuana.
"These findings raise the hope that the mood-elevating
properties of marijuana can be harnessed to treat depression,"
said Daniele Piomelli, director of the Center for Drug
Discovery at the University of California, Irvine, who led the
study.
"Marijuana itself has shown no clinical use for depression.
However, specific drugs that amplify the actions of natural
marijuana-like transmitters in the brain are showing great
promise," he added in a statement.
Piomelli's team used a drug patented this year, called
URB597. It interferes with another compound called fatty acid
amide hydrolase or FAAH, which in turn breaks down anandamide.
Dialing back FAAH makes more anandamide available in the
brain, Piomelli said.
Writing in the journal Biological Psychiatry, Piomelli and
colleagues said they gave URB597 to chronically stressed rats,
which act in a way similar to depressed people.
After five weeks of treatment, treated rats acted more like
unstressed rats, Piomelli's team said.
Piomelli, who patented URB597 with colleagues at the
Universities of Urbino and Parma in Italy, licensed the drug to
European drugmaker Organon BioSciences. He said Organon will
begin clinical studies on the drug in 2008.
Organon is a unit of Dutch chemical group Akzo Nobel
, which is in the process of selling it to
Schering-Plough Corp.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by Julie Steenhuysen)
