Derek Lowe
Article
Derek Lowe is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 22, 2021 and July 06, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as ""(h/t Derek Lowe )""; “There’s been some good discussion on Derek Lowe’s Twitter”; “Here’s Derek Lowe talking about it: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/08/the-aducanumab-approval”. It most often appears alongside FDA, 2017 NYT article on UFOs, @ActualNames1.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: February 22, 2021
- Last seen: July 06, 2023
Appears In
Related Pages
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- FDA (2 shared issues)
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- 2017 NYT article on UFOs (1 shared issues)
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- @ActualNames1 (1 shared issues)
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- AARO (1 shared issues)
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- SSC (1 shared issues)
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- Adam Piovarchy (1 shared issues)
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- aducanumab (1 shared issues)
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- aducanumab (1 shared issues)
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- Aduhelm (1 shared issues)
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- Adumbrations Of Aducanumab (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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- Ahmed Sharif al-Senussi (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
A recent study, Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TrkB neurotrophin receptors (h/t Derek Lowe) proposes a dramatic solution. The authors, mostly based out of a well-known lab in Helsinki, argue that antidepressants bind to TrkB directly, modifying it so that it responds more vigorously to BDNF. They explored the TrkB receptor in more detail than anyone had before, discovering some new functions (it binds to cholesterol) and a new binding site. They found that three antidepressants - fluoxetine ("Prozac"), imipramine, and ketamine, all bind to the new site (the textbooks say all three of these work in different ways). Three control non-antidepressant chemicals - diphenhydramine ("Benadryl"), chlorpromazine ("Thorazine"), and isoproterenol don't. Once bound, the antidepressants seem to help TrkB receptors get to the parts of the cell where they can be useful. Then they show antidepressants don't work on mice with a mutation that breaks TrkB's ability to bind antidepressants (but not its ability to bind BDNF). In other words, the antidepressant effect was coming from direct antidepressant-TrkB binding, not serotonin -> BDNF -> TrkB binding! The serotonin doesn’t matter at all!
Inline links: Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TrkB neurotrophin receptors, Derek Lowe
Okay, that's me wading into a field I know nothing about and criticizing my betters. What do the actual biochemists and cell biologists say? There's been some good discussion on Derek Lowe's Twitter:
Inline links: some good discussion on Derek Lowe's Twitter
- Here's Derek Lowe talking about it: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/08/the-aducanumab-approval
Writing at In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe called this a tragedy.3 I want to go further. This is not just a tragedy, but a travesty. The FDA has become a sadistically distorted mockery of what medical regulation should look like. There can be no excuses for the level of statistical incompetence required to approve aducanumab based on the flimsy efficacy data from the trials.
Inline links: 3
6: Derek Lowe explains the current consensus that sirtuins don’t work for longevity. This doesn’t directly invalidate all of David Sinclair’s work (which I wrote about in my review of his book Lifespan) but it sure does indirectly undermine it.
Inline links: sirtuins don’t work for longevity, my review of his book