A Drug That Can Make the Hippocampus GROW

The Pill That Could Cure Depression By Growing Your Brain link
By Kristin Philipkoski
1/9/2012

There have been tons of studies coming out that show long term depression, Alzheimer disease, and schizophrenia all result in shrunken hippocampi. Well Neuralstem's CEO, Dr. Karl Johe, is here to tell you that there may be a way to reverse that! They have recently gotten FDA's approval to go ahead and do human trials on a new drug that can literally regrow the hippocampus, giving people with severe depression hope for a brighter future. And the best part is, the goal with this drug is to be able to get off of it! Dr. Johe says, "If we can show by MRI that we've increased hippocampus volume and at the same time reversed depression symptoms for six months after patients have stopped taking the drug, then we'll have a cure." Now most antidepressants work by increasing or decreasing certain neurotransmitters (like seretonin or dopamine) but with this new drug it aims to change neurotransmitters, neurons themselves, AND the size of the hippocampus (which plays a huge part in memory and spatial navigation and tends to be the first thing to go in those with Alzheimers). Its a great time for the drug industry for two reasons; one, well holy moly what an incredible drug! To ACTUALLY change the size of a region in the brain is something I never imagined possible, but I think more importantly two, an aim to actually cure instead of subdue the symptoms of a problem (which, in my opinion, has always made the drug industry a very very corrupt organization). So happy days are ahead of us, and more literally than ever before.