Matthew A. Boehm

There is growing interest in psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin, 3,4-metheylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) given emerging research on potential uses as treatments for a variety of health conditions. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted multiple “Breakthrough Therapy” designations to various psychedelic drugs used as treatments for mental health conditions, including MDMA-assisted therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder, psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT for treatment-resistant depression, and LSD for generalized anxiety disorder. However, most psychedelics remain classified as Schedule I under the US Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and are not yet FDA approved for medical use. The Schedule I classification is intended for substances with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, and it carries the strictest federal regulations related to supply, access, distribution, and storage. Nonetheless, there is a growing body of evidence on the neurobiological mechanisms and therapeutic potential of Schedule I psychedelics and over 150 active clinical trials assessing the safety and efficacy of using psychedelics as treatments for various health conditions. There is also growing support from federal research agencies interested in potential medical applications of psychedelics, along with bipartisan activities in Congress and a wide variety of state- and local-level policy reforms. In addition, a recent Executive Order called for federal reforms to accelerate research and access to psychedelic drugs used in treatments for serious mental illness, including timely rescheduling by initiating reviews of relevant products upon successful completion of Phase 3 clinical trials. Rescheduling at the federal level could reduce costs and administrative barriers for legitimate uses of psychedelic drugs in research and medicine while maintaining necessary regulations to ensure safety and accountability of supply and access. This article outlines potential paths for rescheduling various Schedule I psychedelics given the emerging clinical applications.

Solar energy plays a vital role in achieving the United States’ decarbonization goals. Enabling community solar projects is an underutilized strategy for increasing renewable energy generation and offers potential solutions for addressing disparities in solar energy distribution. Although community solar use has been initiated through utility-scale platforms, less attention and efforts have gone into facilitating community solar programs that collaborate with businesses who use distributed solar (i.e., rooftop) panels. Engaging businesses in community solar programs provides opportunities for commercial buildings to expand solar energy panels, maximizing use of available space for solar installations and decreasing land-use for solar farms, increasing use and energy resiliency at the residential level, and improving equitable access. We propose three policy recommendations: (1) Renewing and expanding the Sunny Awards recognition program; (2) Modifying tax incentives for businesses to reduce costs of solar installation and encourage energy distribution; and (3) Introducing a new business model for energy distribution. These recommendations provide strategies and insights for encouraging businesses to implement community solar on a broader scale.

Optogenetics is a widely used technology with potential for translational research. A critical component of such applications is the ability to track the location of the transduced opsin in vivo. To address this problem, we engineered an excitatory opsin, ChRERα (hChR2(134R)-V5-ERα-LBD), that could be visualized using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in a noninvasive, longitudinal, and quantitative manner. ChRERα consists of the prototypical excitatory opsin channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) and the ligand-binding domain (LBD) of the human estrogen receptor α (ERα). ChRERα showed conserved ChR2 functionality and high affinity for [ ¹⁸ F]16α-fluoroestradiol (FES), an FDA-approved PET radiopharmaceutical. Experiments in rats demonstrated that adeno-associated virus (AAV)–mediated expression of ChRERα enables neural circuit manipulation in vivo and that ChRERα expression could be monitored using FES-PET imaging. In vivo experiments in nonhuman primates (NHPs) confirmed that ChRERα expression could be monitored at the site of AAV injection in the primary motor cortex and in long-range neuronal terminals for up to 80 weeks. The anatomical connectivity map of the primary motor cortex identified by FES-PET imaging of ChRERα expression overlapped with a functional connectivity map identified using resting state fMRI in a separate cohort of NHPs. Overall, our results demonstrate that ChRERα expression can be mapped longitudinally in the mammalian brain using FES-PET imaging and can be used for neural circuit modulation in vivo.