Julia Meade - Measuring Depression After Chemotherapy: VCU 3MT Competition
<div><div>5th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 18-19, 2019.<br><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" href="https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/11">https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/11</a><br><br>Transcription:<br><p>Why did I get out of bed today? What’s the point of even trying? We’ve all had days like this, where we don’t have motivation. But what if that was your life, every day? For ten-million people with major depressive disorder in the US, that is a reality. And it severely impairs their ability to do tasks of daily living. Unfortunately, for 70% of these patients, standard antidepressants do not fix their lack of motivation. Similarly, half of breast cancer survivors report moderate to severe lack of motivation that will last for 6 months after chemo treatment. This is a major problem.</p> <p>Part of the reason why we don’t have a magic pill that treats everyone’s blues is because our mouse models of depression are faulty. The most common test for antidepressant activity is to see if the drug makes the mouse tread water for longer. I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend my days treading water, and I’m not looking for a pill that will make me tread water longer. I want a drug that will help patients have the motivation to go to work, to take care of themselves.<br></p> <p>So, what I do, is I develop a new mouse model. I give this mouse the same chemotherapy that human cancer patients get. And I want to see if it impacts their motivation. To do this, I put the mice in a machine, called an operant box. And this machine has a lever. When the mouse presses the lever, he gets one piece of candy. Each next piece of candy costs double. Two lever presses, four lever presses, up to over a thousand lever presses for one measly piece of candy.</p> <p>And here’s what I saw: The mice who got treated for breast cancer chemotherapy, they gave up faster. They just lacked motivation. If we gave these same mice a bowl of mouse candy, they ate it all. If we put them in a running wheel, they ran as much as the placebo mice. So this means the mice weren’t fatigued or having lack of appetite due to chemo, but that they just did not want to do the work. Now that we have this mouse model, we can use it to help develop new antidepressants for humans. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find something in the mice that increases their time treading water, and also the amount of work they’re willing to do for the candy. So that way, our patients with major depressive disorder, or treatment resistant depression from chemotherapy, will be able to go and live full, functional lives.<br></p></div></div>