Could a kitchen spice become a seizure treatment? UNLV researchers see promise

Within the white, clinical walls of a nondescript UNLV lab, a small team of neuroscientists are working on a project with potentially big implications for children suffering from seizures.

Their goal: to turn a compound in caraway seeds, a pungent and earthy kitchen spice used in rye bread, into an effective and safe seizure-reducing medication. So far, researchers said their studies are showing even more promise than they originally expected.

In collaboration with scientists at New Mexico State University, UNLV associate professors of neuroscience Rochelle and Dustin Hines are working to create a new class of medicines by turning carvone, a chemical component found in caraway seeds, into CBD-like molecules and testing their effectiveness as medicines for different ailments.

CBD, short for cannabidiol, is a compound found in cannabis plants that has grown in popularity throughout the last decade as a health product despite limited scientific evidence of its effectiveness outside of seizure treatments.

The married neuroscientists said one CBD-like compound they’ve tested has shown great promise in treating seizure-prone mice, and with the hundreds of different compounds they can create using the seeds, they said more innovative medicines could come in the future.

How does it work?

Seizures happen when the parts of the brain that regulate its activity are functioning abnormally, causing uncontrolled brain activity that can lead to negative symptoms such as unconsciousness, temporary loss of motor control and muscle spasms.

Adriana Carrillo, a UNLV undergraduate and co-author on the study’s Sept. 24 research paper, said she saw how seizures can start first-hand. Using a compound light microscope to look at the brains of seizure-prone mice, she said she saw an “overabundance” of brain connections that increased brain activity to unhealthy levels.

Benzodiazepines, a class of depressant drugs, have traditionally been used to treat seizures because they reduce all brain activity. But this reduction can be harmful for young people with seizures, whose brains require a certain activity level to develop properly, Rochelle and Dustin Hines said.

The only FDA-approved CBD-based seizure treatment is Epidiolex, but Rochelle Hines said the FDA’s guidance for using it on children is “fairly restrictive.” But the proven effects of CBD medicine on treating seizures inspired the Hineses and other researchers to start looking into creating CBD-like compounds that could produce the same effect.

Rochelle Hines said this approach led them to studying carvone-rich caraway seeds and turning the carvone into modifiable CBD-like compounds.

“As you change the chemical structure, you change how it interacts with different targets or receptors, and so we found something else that actually might have a better fit for the receptors than even CBD did,” Rochelle Hines said.

In the brains of seizure-prone mice that were fed the caraway seed-based drug, Carrillo said she saw the once-overwhelming number of brain connections reduce to normal levels, effectively reducing the risk that the mice would get seizures. Dustin Hines added that the mortality rate of the mice that researchers fed their drug to reduced to zero, a show of effectiveness he called “really impressive.”

Dustin Hines said the research team will continue testing their medicine to better understand how it works and to see if it is affecting any other organs in the mice. If all goes well, he said they’ll begin trials on humans, the next step in advancing the medicine toward approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

Great potential

While the foundation for a potential new childhood seizure medication is cause for celebration among the researchers, Dustin Hines said he’s just as excited for what these CBD-like compounds could mean for other medical disorders.

From the hundreds of CBD-like compounds the research team has created from caraway seeds, Dustin Hines said they only expected one or two to show promise for future development. But their early research saw about seven compounds showing results, opening the doors to potentially creating a new library of CBD-like drugs whose effects could extend beyond treating seizures.

“Our biggest worry here is we have too much,” Dustin Hines said. “So where are we going to end up with this? I actually don’t know.”

As the research team continues to understand how their modified CBD compounds work, Carrillo said they’ll have to dig into the minutiae of protein alterations, the strength of their treatment’s effects and how it changes specific cell connections in the brain. But, she said, “answering these questions here in the lab builds a foundation for families having accessibility to safe and effective therapeutics one day in the future.”