A Redesigned Version of an Old Psychedelic Skips the Nausea, Mice Show
Quipazine is an old psychedelic that relieves depression-like symptoms in animal studies but also triggers nausea, because it activates a serotonin receptor in the gut (5-HT3) along with the one in the brain that does the therapeutic work (5-HT2A). Virginia Commonwealth University researchers redesigned the molecule into VCU-1012, engineered to hit the brain receptor selectively while leaving the gut one alone. In mice, it produced the same antidepressant- and anxiety-reducing effects as quipazine, plus more dendritic growth in the frontal cortex, without the GI symptoms. It's mice, not people, and there's no human safety or dosing data yet — but it's a concrete example of designing out a psychedelic's side effect without designing out the mechanism that makes it work.
Read at Science Signaling