Nanxin Li
Neuroscientist in Ronald Duman's Yale psychiatry lab who showed in rats that ketamine's fast antidepressant effect depends on mTOR switching on new synapse growth in the prefrontal cortex
Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine (papers with Ronald Duman, 2010–2015; at the time of the study)
Most antidepressants take weeks to work. Ketamine, a drug that blocks the NMDA type of glutamate receptor, can lift mood within hours. Nanxin Li's 2010 Science paper (LIX2010) from Ronald Duman's lab at Yale looked for the reason in rats. A single dose of ketamine quickly switched on mTOR signalling in the prefrontal cortex, the brain region behind planning and mood control. Within a day the neurons there grew more synaptic spines, the small bumps where one nerve cell receives signals from another. When the team blocked mTOR with rapamycin injected into the brain, both the new spines and the antidepressant-like behaviour disappeared.
The study tied a fast-acting antidepressant to a specific growth pathway and became one of the most cited pieces of evidence that mTOR activity in the brain can be helpful rather than harmful. It was done in rats, so it explains a possible mechanism and does not prove that the same steps happen in depressed patients.
Li followed up the work in the same lab. A 2011 paper in Biological Psychiatry, also as first author, showed that NMDA blockers rapidly reversed the synapse loss and behavioural changes caused by chronic stress in rats. Li also contributed to later Duman-lab papers on scopolamine, on the growth factor neuritin and on stress-driven inflammation in the brain, the last published in 2015. No current institutional page could be confirmed, so the affiliation shown is the one on the Atlas paper.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | A | mTOR-dependent synapse formation underlies the rapid antidepressant effects of NMDA antagonists LIX2010 First author: showed in rats that ketamine rapidly activates mTOR in the prefrontal cortex and that blocking mTOR stops both new synapse formation and the antidepressant-like effect. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Nanxin Li.
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- Ronald S. Duman Psychiatric neuroscientist who showed that ketamine's rapid antidepressant effect depends on mTOR signaling and the growth of new synapses in the prefrontal cortex.
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