By 2022, UC Berkeley researcher Markita Landry thinks she will have developed the technology to X-ray brain tissue of live mice — a feat that would help doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical companies better understand the way antidepressants affect human brains.
It is an ambitious goal, but one that could help revolutionize the way drugs for depression, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders are studied and developed. The project received a five-year, $750,000 grant in February from the Biohub research initiative backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan.
Landry, a biophysicist, and her team are building a microscope that can see in the infrared wavelength range, where tissue and bone are transparent. At the same time, they are developing a nanosensor that, when injected into the brain, will cause spots deep in the brain where dopamine is present to fluoresce. Dopamine is one of the major neurotransmitters — molecules in the brain that drive mood — that scientists and pharmaceutical companies target when developing drugs for psychiatric disorders.