Drug Repositioning Ketamine as a New Treatment for Bipolar Disorder Using Text Mining
Abstract:
Bipolar Disorder (BD), a chronic mental illness, does not have an ideal treatment, and patients with BD have a higher chance of being diagnosed with alcohol abuse, liver disease, and diabetes. The goal of treatment is to prevent a relapse in BD episodes and find a new treatment. The research here looks at the genetics of BD and ignores environmental factors, as they are subjective. Therapy treats known environmental triggers and stressors and explores methods to reduce them. However, therapy alone cannot fully alleviate the symptoms of BD. My research employs text-mining as a primary strategy to obtain relevant genes and drugs pertaining to BD. The main gene involved with BD is the Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). Popular drugs currently used for the treatment of BD are Lithium and Carbamazepine. Using CMapPy to look at gene expression data, one sees a relationship between the two drug therapies and BDNF. Lithium fails to treat mania and Carbamazepine fails to treat depression, relatively speaking. When comparing gene expression data of Lithium and Carbamazepine with Ketamine, a newer therapy for BD, Ketamine, raises the BDNF level, keeps it elevated, and effectively controls BD episodes. Ketamine does not have the shortcomings that Lithium and Carbamazepine have. The next steps would include conducting a clinical trial with the hopeful application of Ketamine as a new treatment for BD.Bibliography/Citations:
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Additional Project Information
Project files
Research Plan:
Bipolar Disorder (BD), a chronic mental illness, does not have an ideal treatment, and patients with BD have a higher chance of being diagnosed with alcohol abuse, liver disease, and diabetes. The goal of the project is to find a treatment that prevents relapse in BD episodes and find a new and targeted treatment. My research will employ text-mining as a primary strategy to obtain relevant genes and drugs pertaining to BD. The main gene involved is the Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). Popular drugs currently used for the treatment of BD are Lithium and Carbamazepine. Using CMapPy to look at gene expression data, one will be able to determine a relationship between the two drug therapies and BDNF. Lithium fails to treat mania and Carbamazepine fails to treat depression, relatively speaking. When comparing gene expression data of Lithium and Carbamazepine with Ketamine, a newer therapy for BD, Ketamine, raises the BDNF level, keeps it elevated, and effectively controls BD episodes. Ketamine does not have the shortcomings that Lithium and Carbamazepine have. The next steps would include conducting a clinical trial with the hopeful application of Ketamine as a new treatment for BD.
Questions and Answers
1. What was the major objective of your project and what was your plan to achieve it?
a. Was that goal the result of any specific situation, experience, or problem you encountered?
The major goal of my project was to find a treatment that would prevent relapse in Bipolar Disorder episodes and find a new treatment. This was based on inspiration from the increasing number of mental health disorders prevalent in my generation. I wanted to do something to help the people who are struggling. I know some people who suffer from some mental health issues. First hand, I can see the stigma surrounding it, as well as the lack of how treatment can work and also not work. After reading the literature, I settled on Bipolar Disorder, a disorder that is often misunderstood and has a lot of stigma surrounding it to find a new, targeted treatment.
b. Were you trying to solve a problem, answer a question, or test a hypothesis?
I was trying to solve a problem.
2. What were the major tasks you had to perform in order to complete your project?
The major tasks I had to perform in order to complete my project were:
- determine the most commonly used drugs to treat Bipolar Disorder and the genes that affect it using a text-mining algorithm to search through PubMed (I had to write the algorithm)
- determine a source of the disorder from the brain in relationship with the most significant gene involved
- compare gene expression data by using the python library "CMapPy" and obtain the data from public datasets
- determine which drug would be best suited to target the affected gene and treat Bipolar Disorder accurately
3. What is new or novel about your project?
a. Is there some aspect of your project's objective, or how you achieved it that you haven't done before?
My project uses computer algorithms to determine the best treatment that would be used. This is the most novel part of my project.
b. Is your project's objective, or the way you implemented it, different from anything you have seen?
Drug repositioning is considered a novel approach to determine a new treatment for a specific disorder. In this case, I drug reposition Ketamine, an anesthetic, so it can be used to treat Bipolar Disorder.
c. If you believe your work to be unique in some way, what research have you done to confirm that it is?'
I have researched the idea of drug repositioning and although it has been done before, it is considered a novel idea due to the high risks and high possibility of failure.
4. What was the most challenging part of completing your project?
a. What problems did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?
The most challenging parts were understanding the pathways and how that specifically affects a patient, in conjunction with their specific situations in life. In addition to this, albeit being a seasoned programmer, writing the code, especially for obtaining the gene expression data, was the hardest situation. I overcame these by doing further research and learning the nuances of both genetic pathways and Python, a language I was initially not comfortable with.
b. What did you learn from overcoming these problems?
Not only did I further my knowledge in genetics and Bipolar Disorder, but I was also able to learn more about Python and become confident. I was able to learn more in the two fields that I love and it was fascinating to delve into these ideas.
5. If you were going to do this project again, are there any things you would you do differently the next time?
Something that I would do differently would be to reorganize and rewrite the code so that the data obtained could be clearer and more understandable. It would have been helpful and would allow for cleaner results to manage, analyze, and interpret.
6. Did working on this project give you any ideas for other projects?
It does. I want to be able to look at how different genes affect a person who is considered "depressed" and what that really means. Because the idea of mental health is unknown, I want to further understand why it happens and why people feel that way, and if there is anything I can do to help them, despite their specific life circumstances.
7. How did COVID-19 affect the completion of your project?
COVID-19 did not affect the completion of my project as the entire project was completed from home / virtually.