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Mass Spectrometry Imaging Shows Modafinil, A Student Study Drug, Changes the Lipid Composition of the Fly Brain
Author(s) -
Philipsen Mai H.,
Ranjbari Elias,
Gu Chaoyi,
Ewing Andrew G.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.202105004
Subject(s) - modafinil , narcolepsy , pharmacology , sphingomyelin , mechanism (biology) , mass spectrometry imaging , drug , neuroscience , psychology , chemistry , medicine , cholesterol , mass spectrometry , philosophy , epistemology , chromatography
Modafinil, a widely used psychoactive drug, has been shown to exert a positive impact on cognition and is used to treat sleep disorders and hyperactivity. Using time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometric imaging, we studied the changes of brain lipids of Drosophila melanogaster induced by modafinil to gain insight into the functional mechanism of modafinil in the brain. We found that upon modafinil treatment, the abundance of phosphatidylcholine and sphingomyelin species in the central brain of Drosophila is significantly decreased, whereas the levels of phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylinositol in the brains show significant enhancement compared to the control flies. The alteration of brain lipids caused by modafinil is consistent with previous studies about cognition‐related drugs and offers a plausible mechanism regarding the action of modafinil in the brain as well as a potential target for the treatment of certain disorders.