LSD atom swap tunes out the trip

By simply trading the positions of a carbon and a nitrogen within the skeleton of the psychedelic compound LSD, chemists have created a molecule that promotes neuron growth and alleviates depression in mice but does not prompt the animals to behave as though they are experiencing hallucinations. The new molecule could lead to treatments for mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury, and stroke ( Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2025, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2416106122). The work was led by David E. Olson , director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics at the University of California, Davis. Scientists in Olson’s lab and at Delix Therapeutics , a company he cofounded, are specialists at tweaking psychedelic molecules . “We’ve taken every major psychedelic class—tryptamines, iboga compounds , amphetamines—and we’ve tinkered with them to try to make them better versions of themselves: to