Andy Domokos

Understanding why psychedelics cause neuronal growth – effectively reversing the neuronal degeneration associated with neuropsychiatric disorders – is the key component to establishing safer and more efficacious treatment methods. My research focuses on designing chemical tools to explore the pathways that lead to neuroplasticity and distinguish them from ones leading to dangerous side effects. These tools have allowed us to image psychedelic movement in the brain and have brought us one step closer to understanding how to design better and safer drugs.

Psychedelics have opened an avenue of treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders – such as major depressive disorder, severe anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder – by reversing the neuronal degeneration associated with these diseases. Despite such high promise, psychedelics can cause severe side-effects in the same patients they would be used to treat. To distinguish between the pathways that lead to hallucinations and neuroplasticity, I have been working to develop chemical tools to better understand these processes. These chemical tools were based on psychedelics such as LSD and 5-MeO-DMT but modified with an alkyne tag that can be used to track their spread, localization, and receptor targets in the brain. After validating that these tools indeed behaved like their psychedelic inspiration, we developed assays utilizing them to parse apart the mechanisms behind psychedelic activity, culminating in us being able to visualize psychedelic movement in the brain. These assays have given us insights in the importance of specific receptor interactions that can be capitalized on to develop safer treatment options for those suffering from these debilitating disorders.