drugmonkey.scientopia.orgDrugmonkey – Grants, research and drugs

Home ASPET 2014 Disclaimer Glossary AboutHome ASPET 2014 Disclaimer Glossary About Grants, research and drugs When making progress is sufficient drugmonkey May 13, 2024 Careerism / Day in the life of DrugMonkey Some of the smaller sources of funding for academic science labs are explicitly and unashamedly in the pump-priming business. This can range from internal pilot or bridge awards to philanthropic donations to smaller charitable foundations. Some funding bodies with larger awards have their own smaller pilot or exploratory mechanisms. Heck, even the mighty NIH has the R56 mechanism. These sources of funding sometimes make their goals clear by asking applicants to state up front in the original proposal what their plan is for using the pilot funding to seek larger funding later. Such as the NIH R01. The progress reports (if it is multi-year) or closeout reports often require a list of accomplishment that is refreshingly attainable. Sure, if you happen to have published papers, they are happy to see that. However there can be a very clear implication that all they expect is that you’ve Done Something. They want to know about academic presentations in poster or speaker format. Pre-prints uploaded or even manuscripts in progress. Trainees supported in related activities. Data generated. And the grant proposals that have been submitted thanks to the data you have generated with their pump-priming infusion of cash to your laboratory. The whole experience from submission to finish of a funded award can give you the impression that these are all enough for them. Something that they view as success in their grant making programs. It’s just so pleasant and refreshing to be able to meet expectations merely by going along, doing regular old scientist kind of stuff for a year. Without any outsized expectations that over-shoot the actual dollars that have been awarded to you for the purpose. Read More... Open Peer Review of Andrew Huberman on Cannabis drugmonkey May 9, 2024 Cannabis / Drug Abuse Science / FWDAOTI One of the first great arguments I had on this blog was with cannabis fans amongst the science blogging community. This was later followed up with another Grande Debate in the comments after I presented some evidence that cannabis withdrawal and nicotine withdrawal are very similar . People just love to talk about cannabis but their willingness to muddle up folk lore, stereotypes and anecdotes with a mimimal amount of cherry picked science always befuddled me. This week, a lengthy clip from his 2 hour and 47 minute podcast on cannabis was posted on twitter by Andrew Huberman. How Marijuana Affects the Brain & Body pic.twitter.com/4tze5fjOqh — Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab) May 5, 2024 It is really not good. It is a dumpster fire of trying to communicate [something] with superficial cannabinoid science. It is not clear what message he is trying to convey. A lot of it he gets very, very wrong. A lot of his discussion, including on the longer form podcast, is not even internally consistent or interpretable. This Twitter post led to a round of correction from various parties including well established and long term expert on cannabinoid pharmacology Matt Hill. Holy fucking shit, it is actually disturbing how inaccurate the overwhelming majority of what is said here is. Like I have to believe that you have legitimately just made this stuff up. There is literally no research that has ever been done that could be cited to support this. — Matt Hill (@canna_brain) May 5, 2024 Additional open peer review of Huberman’s presentation were provided by Ryan Marino , Nick Gilpin , Kevin McKernan , Mike Taffe and Nick Jikomes among many others. Rolling Stone decided to do a piece on it as well. In my viewing of the Twitter clip, the two most egregious errors that jumped out at me were his conflation of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) with cannabidiol, and his continued statements that Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica were useful distinctions in predicting differential effects when consumed. In the case of cannabidiol, Huberman indicted that it had a mechanism of action identical to that of THC, i.e., activation of endogenous cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1). It does not. Admittedly, it is a little mysterious at the moment exactly where CBD acts and whether it does so in a way mechanistically connected to supposed / claimed effects in human users but it is pretty clear that CB1 agonist properties are not at stake. Huberman compounds this by throwing out differences in the ratio of THC to cannabidiol in available cannabis as if it is some sort of meaningful distinction. But going by his misplaced logic about identical mechanism of action, if they act at the same receptor then it is unclear how the ratio would be meaningful. Cannabis fans, and especially those in the industry trying to market products, like to claim that the C. indica species of cannabis and the C. sativa species reliably produce different subjective experiences when consumed. Huberman not only endorses these beliefs wholeheartedly but then, without really saying how, tries to say that these species act in different places in the brain, producing different effects according to the conventional wisdom / claims / folklore / snake oil. As you know, Dear Reader, I believe in behavioral pharmacology. The two cannabis species contain the main driver of effects, namely delta9-THC, but they also contain well over 100 other molecules. Many of which have been shown to, or may yet be shown to, have effects. All of these, including cannabidiol and THC, come in different amounts and ratios in various cannabis materials and this varies tremendously across and within species and sub-strains of those species. The cannabis industry has, by now, created a huge diversity of cannabis plants, and even works hard to try to grow strains that produce very consistent chemical profiles. This work includes a variety of plants which are hybrids of C. sativa and C. indica . It is, correspondingly, very possible that cannabis materials with different chemical profiles would produce distinguishable effects in consumers. Maybe even consistently so across different users. Maybe even consistently enough to overcome the considerable expectancy bias that can dictate different humans’ responses to various drugs, including the ones they ingest via cannabis. The trouble with Huberman’s thesis is that the chemical profiles of plant materials are not, by now, cleanly associated with sativa, indica or any genetic profiling of hybrids which gives a percent association with estimates of the clean parent species. See here for a review . Note also that brand names within the cannabis industry are meaningless as well, since there have been studies which show that samples of a supposed single brand name are not genetically similar. Therefore, even if one could associate one particular strain of cannabis consistently with a given chemical profile AND that profile produced reproducible effects in most consumers AND these effects were distinguishable from those of another cannabis strain…this is not cleanly delineated by ancestral species or the percent of hybridization or the visual appearance of the plant. Read More... Are reviewers trying to do NIDA applicants a solid? drugmonkey May 1, 2024 NIH / NIH funding / Peer Review There is a section of the NIH Data Book / RePORT that allows checking on R01-eqv funding by percentile rank for each completed fiscal year from 214 onward. This is the successor to the NIGMS analyses pioneered by Jeremy Berg when he was Director. This part of the RePORT allows one to display the data for all of NIH or for each IC with funding authority. Even a quick glance lets you see all kinds of interesting things such as the funding of some awards at ridiculously poor percentile ranks and the virtual payline for ICs which claim not to have one. I was looking at NIDA’s FY2023 distribution and wondering about...