Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor

• But OCD is actually a severe and disabling disorder characterised by obsessions – recurrent intrusive thoughts, impulses or images that are unwanted and anxiety provoking.
• Some people with OCD are engaged in rituals for much of their waking life and cannot even leave their homes.
• But in our new research, published in Nature Communications, we discovered an imbalance in brain chemicals in OCD that could lead to radically different and improved treatments.
• Scientists have suspected that this involves an imbalance between chemical messengers, or neurotransmitters, called
  glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (Gaba) in certain brain regions.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy

• To study glutamate and Gaba, we used a high-strength magnet (called 7-Tesla) to perform magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
• This helps scientists to measure what kind of chemicals exist there – and their concentration.
• This allowed us to detect and measure glutamate and Gaba levels separately in different brain regions.
• Importantly, the clinical severity of compulsive symptoms of OCD correlated with the glutamate levels we measured in the SMA.

Future treatments

• The finding raises hopes for better treatments for OCD, focusing on re-balancing glutamate and Gaba levels in key brain regions.
• In patients with extremely severe OCD, for whom all other usual treatments have failed, surgeons have actually removed the ACC.
• And for less severely impaired patients where such drastic treatments are not justified, there may be therapeutic possibilities of using “transcranial magnetic stimulation”.
• In future, if OCD is diagnosed early in the course of the illness – and the chemical imbalance we have discovered is also detected – then these new treatments offer hope for improved quality of life and wellbeing for patients the disorder.

• Drugs that restore neuroplasticity are called plastogens.1-3 Consequently, tianeptine is a plastogen that acts directly on nuclear receptors that regulate gene expression in neurons and microglia.
• “Understanding the mechanism of action of a molecule generally speeds its development and often points the way to broader clinical application,” said Seth Lederman, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Tonix Pharmaceuticals.
• “Despite its success in treating depression outside of the U.S. for more than 30 years, tianeptine’s mechanism has remained obscure.
• “Tianeptine mimics naturally occurring polyunsaturated fatty acid in binding to PPARs.5 When compared to the traditional classes of antidepressants (SSRIs, tricyclics, etc.

• Mindbloom , the world’s largest provider of ketamine therapy, announced today a partnership with SHIFT , a tech-enabled management consulting firm, to provide at-home ketamine therapy as a benefit to its employees.
• Through this partnership, all SHIFT employees will have access to at-home ketamine therapy through Mindbloom for a fraction of the normal price.
• “I am incredibly proud to partner with employers like SHIFT to increase access to transformative at-home ketamine therapy programs,” said Mindbloom Founder & CEO Dylan Beynon.
• And in January, Mindbloom announced a partnership with This is Jane Project to offer affordable at-home ketamine therapy to trauma survivors.

• Secondary endpoints in the study included evaluation of the change from baseline on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), which measures SAD patients’ response to anxiety-provoking social and performance situations experienced in their daily lives.
• The safety and exploratory LSAS results of this Phase 3 open label study build on the safety and LSAS efficacy results from a previous randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 study of fasedienol in a real-world setting.
• All prior registration studies for these medications were positive, and all studies used the LSAS as the primary efficacy endpoint.
• At the time of study closure, study participants had a mean trial exposure of 120 days and a maximum exposure of 320 days.