Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai say they have identified a drug that works against depression by a completely different mechanism than existing treatments. Their study showed that ezogabine (also known as retigabine), a drug that opens KCNQ2/3 type of potassium channels in the brain, is associated with significant improvements in depressive symptoms and anhedonia in patients with depression, according to the team.
Anhedonia is the reduced ability to experience pleasure or lack of reactivity to pleasurable stimuli; it is a core symptom of depression and associated with worse outcomes, poor response to antidepressant medication, and increased risk of suicide.
The FDA approved Ezogabine in 2011 as an anticonvulsant for epilepsy treatment but had not been previously studied in depression. The research results “Impact of the KCNQ2/3 Channel Opener Ezogabine on Reward Circuit Activity and Clinical Symptoms in Depression: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial”, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, provide initial evidence in humans for the KCNQ2/3 channel as a new target for novel drug discovery for depression and anhedonia.
“Preclinical studies point to the KCNQ2/3 potassium channel as a novel target for the treatment of depression and anhedonia, a reduced ability to experience pleasure. The authors conducted the first randomized placebo-controlled trial testing the effect of the KCNQ2/3 positive modulator ezogabine on reward circuit activity and clinical outcomes in patients with depression,” write the investigators.
“Depressed individuals (N=45) with elevated levels of anhedonia were assigned to a 5-week treatment period with ezogabine (900 mg/day; N=21) or placebo (N=24). Participants underwent functional MRI during a reward flanker task at baseline and following treatment. Clinical measures of depression and anhedonia were collected at weekly visits. The primary endpoint was the change from baseline to week 5 in ventral striatum activation during reward anticipation. Secondary endpoints included depression and anhedonia severity as measured using the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), respectively.”
“The study did not meet its primary neuroimaging endpoint. Participants in the ezogabine group showed a numerical increase in ventral striatum response to reward anticipation following treatment compared with participants in the placebo group from baseline to week 5. Compared with placebo, ezogabine was associated with a significantly larger improvement in MADRS and SHAPS scores and other clinical endpoints. Ezogabine was well tolerated, and no serious adverse events occurred.”
“The study did not meet its primary neuroimaging endpoint, although the effect of treatment was significant on several secondary clinical endpoints. In aggregate, the findings may suggest that future studies of the KCNQ2/3 channel as a novel treatment target for depression and anhedonia are warranted.”
“Our study is the first randomized, placebo-controlled trial to show that a drug affecting this type of ion channel in the brain can improve depression and anhedonia in patients. Targeting this channel represents a completely different mechanism of action than any currently available antidepressant treatment,” says James Murrough, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, and neuroscience, director of the Depression and Anxiety Center for Discovery and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and senior author of the paper.
The new drug target, the KCNQ2/3 channel, is a member of a large family of ion channels referred to as the KCNQ (or Kv7) family that act as important controllers of brain cell excitability and function in the central nervous system. These channels affect brain cell function by controlling the flow of the electrical charge across the cell membrane in the form of potassium (K+) ions.
Researchers at Mount Sinai, including study co-author Ming-Hu Han, PhD, professor of Pharmacological Sciences, and Neuroscience, had previously conducted a series of studies in mice showing that changes in the KCNQ2/3 potassium channel play an important role in determining if the animals show depression and anhedonic-like behavior following chronic stress in an experimental model of depression. In particular, mice that appear to be resistant to developing depression in the face of stress show an increase in KCNQ2/3 channels in the brain.
“We viewed enhanced functioning of the KCNQ channel as a potential molecular mechanism of resilience to stress and depression,” notes Han, who also discovered that if he gave a drug that could increase the activity of this channel, such as ezogabine, to mice that had become depressed in the stress model, the mice no longer showed the depression and anhedonic behaviors; in other words, the drug acted as an antidepressant.
“The fundamental insight by Dr. Han’s group that a drug that essentially mimicked a mechanism of stress resilience in the brain could represent a whole new approach to the treatment of depression was very exciting to us,” said Murrough.
In collaboration with Han, Murrough carried out a series of studies in patients with depression to begin to test if the observations in mice could be translated to humans. An initial open-label (no placebo) study in patients with depression led by Murrough provided initial evidence that ezogabine could improve symptoms of depression and anhedonia in a manner that was associated with changes in brain function.
“I think it’s fair to say that most of us on the study team were quite surprised at the large size of the beneficial effect of ezogabine on clinical symptoms across multiple measures related to depression,” said Murrough. “We are greatly encouraged by these findings and the hope they offer for the prospect of developing novel, effective treatments for depression and related disorders. New treatments are urgently needed given that more than one-third of people suffering from depression are inadequately treated with currently approved therapeutics.”