Hallucinogens measured with Patch Clamping Techniques

[Prairie_oyster]

Hello all,

I have the opportunity to perform patch clamping tests on a drug of my choice. My particular interest is on hallucinogens and neuronal effects - any ideas for some useful experiments that haven't been done yet?

Cheers

P_o

 

[onmyway]

exactly what kind of cell will you be applying your patch clamp to?

 

[mimac]

Hmm, does it have to be an ligand gated ion channel for this technique to work?

 

[Prairie_oyster]

Well I currently have free reign on what I can look into, within reason. The technique is not limited to LGIC :D

Im just having trouble deciding what is worthy research to conduct, in relation to perhaps migraines or depression. 5-HT modulation seems to be a key target of these drugs, hence the hullaballoo around the treatment of disorders with a serotonergic basis.

 

[onmyway]

it would be interesting to look at some of the 5ht receptors involved in regulating pain in the spinal cord. pain windup/chronic pain still needs to be understood. i kinda wonder what something like ergotamine or lsd does to the pain inhibiting neurons in the dorsal horn that normally receive serotonergic signals from the reticular formation.

 

[BilZ0r]

Are you working in brain slices or in cultured cells?

If I were you, I would use DOI, and I would further investigate this paper:
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 5;104(23):9870-5. Epub 2007 May 29.
Mechanism of the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor-mediated facilitation of synaptic activity in prefrontal cortex.
Béïque JC, Imad M, Mladenovic L, Gingrich JA, Andrade R.

Specifically figure 5. What is special about those sub-populations? I don't want to tell you exactly, because I want to do it.

 

[fireball]

I think your going to have to walk before you can run here.

First of all if your going to work on cultured neurones, have you got a protocol for getting them?

If your going to do transient transfection of something like HEK-293 cells, ill tell you now its a pain in the ass and your going to have to spend a while to get it to work.

I think you need to think about what time you have to learn what techniques you need before you even think of an experiment. Patch clamping isnt hard per se, but getting the right cells is. You need to do this before you even think of looking a the literature for an experiment to do. Its surprising that whoever is letting you do this has not told you what is possible in their lab.

Plus if your wanting to do something with pain and the spinal cord the i reckon an in vivo model is the way to go.

If you want to do some basic pharmacology on some 5-ht receptor subtypes, id go with xenopus oocytes. Very easy. ive not tried them with GPCR, although it is possible.

 

[Prairie_oyster]

Cool guys thanks for the input, i totally havent had the time i need to plan it properly because im caught up in an unrelated cannabinoid project at the moment, will check out the papers today.

Ive got 12 weeks to get the labwork fully done, but have no prior experience with patch clamping