About This Project

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What is the context of this research?

DMT might be a modulator of Sig-1R in a complex cellular signaling that regulate cancer and neuronal plasticity. Due to technical constraints it has been uneasy in the past to measure and track the DMT molecule in human body, and hence it has been almost impossible to identify its physiological roles.

Moreover, Sig-1R was for a long time considered to be an orphan receptor, while in recent years it quickly became one of the most promising target in psychiatric and neurological molecular research. To this day, we know that Sig-1R is ubiquitous in many tissues and it plays a prominent role in coordinating cellular stress responses in mitochondria, while in neurons, Sig-1R extends this response to the cell's membrane level by interacting with numerous proteins involved in synaptic plasticity.

What is the significance of this project?

From 60s to late 70s psychedelic research was very active but was basically lacking of the technical resolution we have nowadays. Also, this type of research was mainly focused on the pharmaceutical use of psychedelic compounds, and not on their endogenous role. After a pause of nearly 40 years in this field, recent advances in our understanding of the neurobiology of psychedelics have led to renewed interest in their clinical potential in the treatment of various psychiatric disorders. It's interesting to note that these novel studies are showing that sub-hallucinogenic doses (similar to the physiological one) are those who particularly determine promising responses for treating anxiety, depression, PTSD, OCD and addiction. My research will focus on the endogenous role of DMT in the CNS.

What are the goals of the project?

I'm raising some basic funding to finish my literature research, review it, publish it in an open access journal (i.e. Frontiers) as a systematic review, and propose it to labs that are involved in Sig-1R studies.

My hypothesis is that DMT is regularly produced in low doses at the peripheral level and then transported in various tissues where it is stored. DMT is subsequently released during cellular stress, participating in stress response mechanisms mainly via Sig-1R activation.

I wrote this almost 22k words research one year ago, and then after dozens of new papers confirming my intuition I finally decided to follow it and try to publish in open access. Unfortunately I don't have access to a wet lab that could host this type of experiments so my hope is to write a compelling review.